The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya) by Bradley Beaulieu

Avil.”
    “We don’t need help from the likes of them.”
    Styophan wished that were true. He didn’t like coming here any more than Avil did, but there was no choice, and not simply because this had been a direct order from his Lord Duke. The Haelish could help turn the tide against Yrstanla. The Empire might be a wounded lion, but its claws could still rend flesh.
    Still, Avil was merely voicing his fears, fears most of the men shared. Fears Styophan shared as well, though perhaps not to the same degree. The Haelish were fierce warriors—they were not to be taken lightly—but tales always grew in the telling. And besides, it was the Empire that had to worry about them, not the Grand Duchy.
    As they hiked up the slope, the sounds of trilling and strange looping calls filled the forest. Had they not been walking to meet the Haelish, Styophan might not have known, but the timing was too convenient, so he began searching the landscape carefully for the first of them. He found them moments later. Tall men stepped out from behind trees, some near, some far. They wore breeches of thick leather, but no shirts. The skin on their chests and arms and faces were covered with a grey-green mud—even their hair was thick with it—making them difficult to see even though Styophan was staring right at them. They were muscular, these men, not the heavy muscles that landsmen who lifted cargo all day developed, but like windsmen who spent their days climbing rigging. They were lithe, with muscles like corded rope.
    They slipped forward through the trees, their gait odd, like a cat’s. They seemed barely aware of how carefully they were choosing their course over the leaf- and branch-strewn ground, but he was sure they were perfectly aware of just how silent they were, each and every one of them. Winter was coming—frost was on the ground—and yet they wore no shoes. Styophan was a man closely acquainted with the bitter winters of the islands, but he got cold just watching them approach.
    “Hands clear of your weapons,” Styophan said in Anuskayan. Then he raised both hands slowly.
    Styophan was no small man, but one of the Haelish stood a full head taller than him. This one approached while the others stopped behind him. Styophan could see beneath the grey-green mud that his hair was a reddish brown. His eyes were the green of new summer growth, and though they might not be charitable, neither were they wicked.
    “Are you Kürad?” Styophan asked in Yrstanlan.
    “I am Datha,” he replied in a thick accent, “but the King awaits us.” He held out his hand and the two of them gripped one another’s forearms in the way of the Haelish. His grip was short, perfunctory, as if he could barely stomach the presence of Anuskayan men in his lands. Datha, after looking over the streltsi, pointed to the crest of the slope behind him. “Come.”
    Styophan hadn’t been sure until that moment whether these men were the ones they were supposed to meet. The fighting Haelish moved so often it was difficult to tell, and with Princess Ishkyna so occupied by the nascent war on Yrstanla’s southeastern coast, he’d had no word to verify the final location where they would meet.
    They went uphill for a quarter-league and then went down slope into another long valley that doglegged at a pond overrun with cattails. In a section of the forest dominated by twisted oak trees stood dozens of Haelish yurts. Their roofs were made of oiled leather, the walls of woven reed. It was strangely quiet, as if most had been killed, leaving the rest to grieve in silence. Somewhere in the distance a babe cried, but beyond this he heard little more than the soft clatter of the bright beads that hung from the arched entryways to the yurts.
    As they were led toward a massive yurt at the center of the village, several children poked their heads around doorways. Some were pulled back by their mothers; others merely stared, their eyes hard as they sized up these