The Painting (Rise of the Witch Guard Book 2) Read online

  The Painting: Book 2

  (Rise of the Witch Guard)

  by

  Luke Sky Wachter

  Copyright © 2014 by Joshua Wachter

  All rights reserved.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental. Respect my electronic rights because the money you save today will be the book I can't afford to write for you tomorrow.

  Books by Luke Sky Wachter:

  As of 05-24-2014

  SPINEWARD SECTORS NOVEL SERIES

  Admiral Who?

  Admiral's Gambit

  Admiral's Tribulation

  Admiral's Trial

  Admiral’s Revenge

  SPINEWARD SECTORS NOVELLAS

  Admiral’s Lady: Ashes for Ashes, Blood for Blood

  RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVEL SERIES

  The Blooding

  RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVELLAS

  The Boar Knife

  Books by my Brother:

  Caleb Wachter

  SPHEREWORLD NOVEL SERIES

  Joined at the Hilt: Union

  Between White and Grey

  SPINEWARD SECTORS: MIDDLETON’S PRIDE

  No Middle Ground

  SPINEWARD SECTORS NOVELLAS

  Admiral's Lady: Eyes of Ice, Heart of Fire

  Follow this series at Facebook – The Witch Guard

  (https://www.facebook.com/groups/139516032885492/)

  Join www.PacificCrestPublishing.com for beta reading opportunities on upcoming books and other exclusive extras.

  Be sure to stop by the blog at blog.PacificCrestPublishing.com for updates.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Reunions can be joyful or full of sorrow

  Chapter 2: Mustering Out…or is it Mustering In?

  Chapter 3: Taking Stock.

  Chapter 4: Dealing with Dresses

  Chapter 5: Ransom me on my Faith and on my Honor?

  Chapter 6: Settling the Accounts and packing the wagons

  Chapter 7: A Master of the Fair Deal

  Chapter 8: Partings are such Sweet Sorrow

  Chapter 9: Mustering the Men

  Chapter 10: The Meet and Greet

  Chapter 11: Getting down to Business

  Chapter 12: Making her Mark

  Chapter 13: The Long Road ‘away’ from Home

  Chapter 14: Muddy and Miserable are no fit reason to take it easy

  Chapter 15: A Knightly Scolding

  Chapter 16: Tulla’s has Eyes

  Chapter 17: On the Forage and Finding Food

  Chapter 18: An impromptu training session for the Lieutenant

  Chapter 19: Harsh Encounters

  Chapter 20: Bandit Ravens!

  Chapter 21: Mistaken Assumptions and not being told what to do

  Chapter 22: Tulla Revisited

  Chapter 23: Falon takes a stroll

  Chapter 24: A Handsome Face and Dark Encounters

  Chapter 25: No one Escapes Old Tulla that easily!

  Chapter 26: Staggering Back home after a rough night leads to no rest for the weary.

  Chapter 27: Barbarian Raiders

  Chapter 28: Attacks and Clearing the Gap

  Chapter 29: A Cold Camp

  Chapter 30: The Frozen Earth Campaign

  Chapter 31: Marching to Ice Finger Keep

  Chapter 32: The Hill Attack

  Chapter 33: Back on the road to Ice Finger Keep

  Chapter 34: The Plot Thickens

  Chapter 35: Seeing Smythe

  Chapter 36: Tulla?!

  Chapter 37: A Night Attack!

  Chapter 38: The Battle Lines are Drawn

  Chapter 39: A Storm of Swords

  Chapter 40: Hold the Line?

  Chapter 41: The Fog of War

  Chapter 42: Through the Hole

  Chapter 43: Not out of the Woods yet

  Chapter 44: Home is where the Heart is but your tent is where you sleep

  Chapter 45: When Summoned: I come running…or rather, at a fast walk

  Chapter 46: Murder She Wrote

  Chapter 47: Smythe and unexpected gifts

  Epilogue 1: Like a Bull through the Fence

  Epilogue 2: Hard Reckonings

  Epilogue 3: A Mother and a Witch

  Chapter 1: Reunions can be joyful or full of sorrow

  Falon hadn’t taken three steps outside Madam Tulla’s tent when her side and belly started hurting. After that, each step seemed to send a jolt through her. She doggedly continued onward, preferring to suffer, pop her stitches—which she only then realized were present—and pass out than head back inside Tulla’s tent for a seat.

  At least my breathing is okay again, she thought, grateful for small favors. No one paid her any mind as she limped past a very large, very green tent. Part of that might have been because of the cries that occasionally emanated from inside; clearly not everyone had been healed up from their injuries during the night. Still, the noises from inside were nothing compared to the screams she had heard on the field.

  Shuddering, Falon tried to quicken her pace and leave the tent behind her but she couldn’t even do that for more than a few steps. Seeing a wagon piled half full of corpses, she turned her head. Taking deep breaths through her mouth, she focused on just putting one foot in front of the other.

  Feeling slightly nauseated but able to take slightly longer strides, Falon asked for directions as she went. Other than a few snorts at her lack of knowledge, the men she encountered kept pointing her in the right direction until she found the Fighting Swans’ encampment.

  Even from a distance, she could tell the Company was smaller than before. Gritting her teeth with determination, she pressed onward. Even if it was more of a stumbling gait than she would have liked, she managed to walk into camp under her own power. Looking up, she saw a number of men still in the backs of her wagons, bandages on stumps of hands, feet, arms, and even entire legs. More injured men were sprawled around the fire pits.

  Falon paused to catch her breath, and immediately told herself that she had done so in order to get the lay of the land, rather than to rest. Spurred back to doing something productive, even if she was still catching her breath and waiting for her side to stop hurting, Falon did a quick and dirty nose count.

  She slumped and placed a hand on her forehead as she counted roughly half as many men in camp as had originally left from the Two Wicks—and that was including the amputees and wounded.

  Her ears roaring as she realized the implication that roughly half her men—half her friends and neighbors—had died on the field, she stumbled over to the wagon she usually claimed for a sleeping spot under.

  “Fal?” asked an incredulous voice.

  Falon stopped and suddenly she wanted to weep.

  “Is that you?” asked Ernest disbelievingly. “Is that really you?!”

  “I thought you were dead,” Falon said thickly as she turned to face her friend. “I was sure—” she didn’t get any further before Ernest broke into a stiff-legged gait and crossed the few feet that still separated them.

  “Oof,” she grunted as Ernest gave her a bear hug and picked her up off the ground, causing her flank and abdominal wounds to shriek in protest.

  “It’s you, it really is,” Ernest half laughed, half cried. He started to turn with her still in his arms when he lost his balance. Almost as quickly as he had picked her up, Ernest released her with his arms waving in the air. He had to perform a one-legged hop before he stopped his giddy twirling, and even then he landed on his knee with the other leg at full extension off to the side.

  Doubled over and clutching he
r belly, Falon dry heaved twice before her middle settled back down.

  “Ye don’t look so good, Falon,” Ernest said, getting back to his feet with a wince and coming over to place a hand on her back while she was still bent over.

  “It’s okay,” Falon smiled weakly, and through sheer force of will she straightened. Her stomach rolled again, and she quickly placed the back of her hand against her mouth to hide her grimace. Through all of this though, she still managed to see how stiff his left leg was when he moved.

  She was about to comment when at least half a dozen men converged on the two of them.

  “Good to see you, Lieutenant,” Aodhan greeted, clapping her on the shoulder and giving her a nod. Falon’s heart swelled with a pride she had never felt.

  “Vance?” she asked searching his face.

  Aodhan just shook his head slightly and squeezed her shoulder before stepping back.

  Falon started to close her eyes, but the next man arrived to chuck her on the shoulder and she needed her balance back. So her eyes popped back open, and having caught the man’s gaze she had no choice but to say, “Hi.”

  “Good to see you, Mister Falon,” said Kerry, an East Wick Boy who used to go with Nyia. Kerry shook her hand with obvious respect on his face before he moved on. Falon’s mouth opened in surprise at this treatment. She couldn’t understand what she had done to deserve it, but Kerry was soon followed by another East Wicker.

  Then a pair of West Wick men came to express their regard and Glaisne stepped up, causing Falon to tense.

  “Good job out there, Lieutenant. Everyone, including Nyia, was worried about you,” he said seriously, and then clasped her arm at the elbow before stepping back. He met her gaze evenly, and she couldn’t see any of the old rancor still inside his eyes. If his hand clenched her own a little bit harder than any of the rest of the men before he stepped back, Falon wasn’t about to complain.

  More than half the remaining men, including the majority of those who were still ambulatory, came over to welcome her back. When the last of the villagers had come and gone, at the end of the line stood a shorter Imperial.

  “Darius,” Falon greeted him, looking at him appraisingly. She was relieved to see that he still had both arms. After the last time she had seen him, she had been unsure if that would be the case.

  Darius gave her a nod and, just like with Aodhan, that nod made her feel like she had actually done something worth recognition. She—a sister, a girl…a woman!—had been to war. She had seen battle, and she hadn’t run. Not only had she not run, she had stood her ground! She could feel a sense of confidence within herself that she had never known.

  “It’s good to see you again, Corporal,” she said, trying to keep her face as even and serious as everyone else—well, everyone else except for Ernest—when at that moment all she really wanted to do was throw her arms around each and every one and hug them until she could once again assure herself that they were still alive. They were alive when so many of them weren’t.

  “Not a Corporal anymore, Mister Rankin,” Darius corrected, the corner of his mouth turning up.

  “Really?” Falon asked, her brows rising in surprise. When Darius just nodded in response and didn’t look like he was going to immediately continue, Ernest butted in.

  “Captain Smythe offered to make him a Sergeant, after…” Ernest started out enthusiastically, but trailed off abruptly.

  Falon looked over at him curiously, and Ernest looked simultaneously embarrassed and shameful. “After what?” she prompted.

  “After we figured you for dead on the battlefield,” Darius finished when it became apparent that Ernest was too embarrassed to continue.

  “It wasn’t like that; ye were just missing and…” Ernest once again trailed off into an embarrassed silence.

  “You were left for dead,” Darius said bluntly, “it was assumed that everyone who survived the stand against the Pink Princess had been accounted for.”

  “You all thought I was dead,” Falon said nonplused.

  “I lit a torch for ye during the mass burial service for the company, and threw it on the pyre,” Ernest said softly.

  “But my body wasn’t there. Obviously?” Falon said, both confused and taken aback to discover they had already performed her funeral.

  “It’s been two days, and everyone on our Wing that could be identified had already been taken to make the new battle hills,” Ernest explained.

  “Two days!” Falon yelped.

  “I thought ye knew,” Darius said, “ye must have been in one of the healing tents…although we checked them all for any member of the band,” he shot a sharp look over toward the Healing Wench and her apprentice.

  “It doesn’t sound like it was anyone’s fault,” Falon said slowly. “My wounds,” she gestured to her midsection and flank, “didn’t want to heal up right away. So I was stuck in one of the…specialty tents, I guess it was, for two days—” she said, unable to stop herself from glancing at the two of them questioningly. She was still unable to grasp that it had been two whole days she had been stuck inside that tent.

  Ernest nodded sympathetically, but she could see the relief that she was right here and still alive on his face.

  “So…a Sergeant, eh?” Falon asked Darius with a smile.

  The Imperial just shrugged.

  “Captain Smythe offered him a promotion to stay with the company,” Ernest quickly interjected, “but he said he’d have to think about it, now that ye were dead and all.”

  “I actually think I’m feeling touched,” Falon said, taken aback by this information.

  The Imperial splayed his hands. “It’s not exactly like that,” Darius said with a bemused look on his face as he met her gaze.

  “What is it like then?” Falon asked curiously.

  “Well…” the Imperial finally had the grace to look half way embarrassed, “the money’s better working as an out and out mercenary.”

  Falon lowered her forehead and stared at him through narrowed eyes.

  “Don’t look at me that way,” Darius said sharply, “this is your country, not mine. Besides, work as either an armsman in service to some Lord or Knight, or an outright mercenary, still makes double what that Smythe is offering for Sergeant’s wages. You and I had a deal, not me and the Captain.”

  “Your loyalty is touching,” Falon’s mouth twisted, “but I don’t see as it really matters what the wages are. We won, and that means we’re all going home. There won’t be a need for a Fighting Swans militia company just as soon as the Lords and Princes have made a deal. That means no more war, and no more battles; his Lordship won’t need warriors or Sergeants. I hate to say it, but maybe being a mercenary armsman is your best bet.”

  “Perhaps,” Darius said, then bracing to his weird, Imperial version of attention, he gave her a salute, “it’s good to have you back, Lieutenant.”

  “It’s good to be back,” Falon agreed with pleasure. She watched with a faint smile as the Imperial turned and walked away, no doubt to check on something in the camp. She had missed this interaction—without even knowing that she’d missed it, she had. But still, what she missed the most was home. She ached to see her sisters.

  “When do we break camp, Ernest,” Falon asked, turning to the boy, “what’s the rumor running around say?”

  Ernest smiled weakly.

  “What?” Falon asked, leaning back.

  “His Lordship said that maybe by tomorrow a new treaty agreement will have been reached, a ‘not-aggressor pact’ or something, I think he said,” Ernest explained.

  “A non-aggression pact,” Falon corrected absently, before homing in on the part that had caught her real attention, “what is this about most of the men going back? Surely they can’t mean to keep the wounded here when we have a pair of wagons and two perfectly good healers?”

  “No it’s not that, Fal,” Ernest said quickly, “it’s just…you see, a Page came around here earlier this morning. He’s recruiting men…�
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  “A page is recruiting men?” Falon said with disbelief.

  Ernest waved his hand irritably. “No of course not,” he grumped, “look, do ye want to hear what I know or not?”

  “Fine, alright,” Falon said with ill grace, “go on.”

  “Anyway, I hear Captain Smythe may be tasked with forming a company of volunteers under Richard Lamont’s charter to support Prince William’s new expeditionary force,” Ernest explained.

  “A lot of big words in there,” Falon said neutrally. Thankfully, a volunteer company was just exactly that: a group of volunteers. Something she—and anyone else in their right mind—would have absolutely no interest in doing, “An army by any other name.”

  “It’s an expedition, Fal,” Ernest exclaimed, as if the fact that it was being called an ‘expedition’ made things somehow different from what it was. It was almost as if he was trying to convince her…or himself.

  “An expedition,” Falon said neutrally, and her left leg started to tremble.

  “To the North,” Ernest added.

  “The Frozen Mountains…the Northlanders, you mean,” Falon said feeling numb. She tried to shake it off; prophecy or no prophecy, none of this had a thing to do with her. She wouldn’t allow it to!

  “The Prince doesn’t want to make another war,” Ernest explained hurriedly, “they say he’s learned his lesson. But one of our border Lords up there has asked for support.”

  “They need armsmen—Men-at-Arms and Knights—not half-trained villagers as fodder for their armies,” Falon said flatly.

  “The northern shamans are threatening the Kingdom,” Ernest said with tears in his eyes, “don’t ye see, Fal?”

  “What I see is that for some reason you’re interested in throwing your life away; right after we only just survived one war you’re ready to just march off to another,” Falon said in a rising voice.