My vision quickly improved to see that the gaudy light had not yet completely dissipated. A tower of pure whiteness rose from the rune atop the hill. The corrupted part of me recoiled at the holy sight. The others experienced less resistance, going as far as taking a few steps toward the solid brightness. A harder squint at the sanctified tower revealed the silvery white Mytariss kneeling in front of Odet’s shorter, slightly darker outline, a hand resting on a shoulder.
Then, as Clarissa rested a hand on my shoulder, the light and her divine authority vanished. Now I was able to run unimpeded to reach a hard breathing princess on her hands and knees. Gerard knelt beside her, a hand rubbing and patting her back. His little shelter had disintegrated, but it was raining at a much reduced pace. A glance upward showed that the rain clouds right above us had been partially diffused by the now absent light beam. At the top of the hill I saw that the rune still glowed from the residue of fading magic. Before I got a good look at the rune’s design, a distorted crystal ward blocked it from view.
Hearing the princess sniffle, Clarissa asked Odet, “Are you okay?”
The princess pushed herself upright and wiped her face with a sleeve. “Y-yes, yes, I’m fine… It’s just so overwhelming… and I was actually crying before I summoned her.”
“I want to cry with you,” said Ujin, though he did not sound as if he was about to weep. “I’ll admit I’m not the most active temple goer, but seeing such, such pureness… kinda frightening, really. Gods forgive me.”
“You never have to step into a temple in your life if you follow the gods’ tenets… Helping us to cleanse Orda of the Advent will go a long way to attest your honor.”
“If Mercer and I aren’t too worried about it, you shouldn’t be,” said Clarissa. “Did Mytariss ‘say’ anything to you, Odet?”
“Yes. I think I spoke to her as well, but I honestly don’t recall. The inside of my head is a little sore. Regardless, whatever she told me, it was… melancholy… yet comforting. Inspiring even. I’ll have to meditate on it.”
“That’s-”
“Stay back, scholar,” said Gerard.
Ghevont stepped back from the shield. “Ah, excuse me. It’s just that something is glowing brighter than everything else behind the princess’ ward.”
Odet stood up so she could get to the rune’s epicenter. She plucked something off the ground and told Gerard to abolish the rune. Once he did, Odet dispelled her shield and opened her fist to present us with a bluish white prana crystal, its gleam softening.
“It won’t be a long summons,” said the princess, “but those few moments should provide us with invaluable defensive and offensive capabilities.”
“And we still have a few days of training before we have to focus on rallying what forces we’ve gathered,” I said. “Shall we get started?”
“She just summoned an eidolon, Mercer!” remarked Clarissa.
“No, he’s right,” said Odet. “We all have to train until we drop.”
And for the next two days we did so, even bringing in the flight capable guildsmen at times to push us harder and further. There was no mistaking that purifying her prana to the point she could summon Mytariss had also added an enriched glimmer to her wards. That heightened effort instantly granted even her weaker wards the strength to resist my dragon fire a moment or two longer, corrupted or not. She stated that the improved shields tired her out quicker, but not to a concerning degree.
On the third day, after getting in a morning of training, I visited the guild house to begin organizing the warriors. On entering the courtyard I saw several Wregor soldiers guarding the entrance to the central pagoda tower. My identity got my group through the guards. Indeed, I had been expected by them since yesterday. In the guild’s office I saw the highest ranking guild members meeting with Prince Ashina, who stood to greet me.
Returning his bow, I said, “I’m sorry, the Warriors Guild is currently not taking any more applicants. Please try again later.”
“You jest, but it appears your presence has attracted quite a few promising young warriors here. However, in my case, I bring an army of well-trained soldiers. It’s time we put them to work, no? I hear Shia is having a problem with Pukam rats that needs taking care of.”
“The rats are a lost cause. I have another infestation in mind.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
It seemed the guild were not the only ones who experienced an upswing in morale. Soldiers from the empire’s different provinces responded to my call for aid, something the prince’s father was worried would happen. It had not really occurred to me until now that the emperor wasn’t only thinking about the Chiszir being a problem. It’s feasible that anyone inspired to take up a sword for someone else’s cause may point that sword at someone they didn’t quite agree with once the initial problem was solved. The optimistic side of me foresaw more politics in my future. The pessimistic side saw no future at all.
At any rate, with many of those extra fighters too far to assist in Jegeru, they instead went to replace the Wregor soldiers that left their posts on the western border. At the same time, mercenaries and soldiers from the north were making their way to supplement those men. This allowed the emperor to add twenty thousand soldiers to the fifteen thousand already stationed at the Iunt, not to mention the eight thousand sailors his ships could deliver at a moment’s notice. Yet another ten thousand infantry units could be added in a few weeks, but as it was mainly cavalry migrating to Jegeru, their task was to reinforce the Iunt until otherwise ordered.
Jegeru’s side of the Iunt River reportedly had a paltry force left guarding their homeland. Attempts to learn what they knew of the situation beyond their immediate vicinity proved futile. The commanders in charge of defenses claimed to have had little success in contacting their generals and higher nobility. Their last standing order was to resist a Wregor invasion—and to presumably wait for reinforcements to counter what they saw as a Wregor scheme. However, a dragon knight’s word that Wregor was not their true enemy gave them the incentive to send an envoy to meet with me and the prince.
All the same, in that meeting they continued voicing their distrust of the empire. Many refugees that reached the Iunt told them of the human-turned-monsters that roamed their lands, monsters that Wregor surely bred or summoned. It required that I summon Aranath for the dragon himself to explain what the nismerdon were capable of. In addition, the dragon laid out their two choices. The Jegeru soldiers could either help a dragon-backed Wregor army figure out the state of their kingdom, or they could contend with a dragon-backed Wregor army. They would have a day and a half to join us or become an obstacle to go through.
In the meantime, part of the Wregor fleet patrolling the Iunt planned to unload their men at the eastern mouth of the river in order to flank a stubborn opposition or join their new ally. It may have been easier to avoid crossing the Iunt altogether and focus on going ashore closer to Watawara, but securing the Iunt’s strategic position and resources were simply too significant to leave as an unknown variable. On top of that, the area was not experiencing any trouble from thralls, so moving the bulk of our forces through it promised to be less contentious than going through the southeastern section of the kingdom.
The Iunt defenders came to an agreement at the deadline’s arrival. They offered to expand our army by five thousand of their own men to learn what was going on, but under the conditions that they remained self-determining, took the best strategic positions, and that they had my duty-bound pledge that I would aid them combat Wregor if they turned out to be the enemy. Prince Ashina did not particularly like the second condition, but Odet convinced him to agree to their demands. She pointed out that Jegeru maneuvering for a better position often meant that they would be forced to engage the enemy first if they held said location.
Thankfully, guildsmen were a group of combatants that required only organization, not compromise. The four members of my winged guard served as my captains, each one in charge of about fo
rty guildsmen. I put Lady Qin in command of a squad of fellow fliers while the others oversaw ground units. As for the actual guild leadership, most of them, including the guild master, left Tawahori and setup base near the Iunt separate from Wregor’s military command. They had four Unburdened to keep them informed about our progress, so information sharing was not going to be a problem unless the specialized humans died or we exited their range.
Wregor soldiers and guildsmen started crossing Iunt bridges just before dawn. It was a wonderful sight to see thousands of allies trembling the ground in their march to fight the Advent, but I couldn’t help thinking we had given the cult too much time to prepare. Without a doubt they knew an army would be coming for them at some point, so how would they counter us? Were they going to divide and conquer? Lure us into a trap? Hide deep in Pukam or under the earth? Unleash every giant against us?
Our best bet to find out what the Advent had in store for us were our winged units. Five hundred of the best scouts complemented the guildsmen that flew with me while the rest patrolled and scouted the directions I decided not to take. It was a tantalizing idea to gather every winged warrior available and survey Jegeru on our own and at a much faster rate. Of course, that played too much into the divide and conquer tactic the Advent might pursue if we presented the opportunity, so we never strayed too far from the ground forces.
Since we anticipated thralls to be an early problem, much of the leading army consisted of cavalry. Fortunately for those below, western Jegeru was generally flat terrain. If a siege turned out to be necessary in a city or other fortified space, then heavy infantry units would be called from those left to defend the Iunt or the mobile camps that made up our supply lines. What’s more, the Wregor navy just offshore Watawara would deploy light infantry units once our army moved a few hundred miles to the south and southeast. In the event the sailors encountered heavy resistance there, then our army would move in to relieve them.
As the Jegeru intelligence suggested, not much in the way of thralls roamed the lands near the Iunt. The lack of enemies here meant the refugees that made it to northwestern Jegeru found some measure of respite, though for one reason or another, a small percentage of them still insisted on crossing over to Wregor. The refugees were also the biggest clue that most of our scouting parties did not have to investigate northern Jegeru, for the vast majority of uprooted people came from the south and southeast.
It took nine days for scouts to finally see signs of thrall activity, but except for a few of their dead, the thralls themselves remained absent. Other than rats, crows, and vultures, few non-insect animals scurried or flew about in the deserted villages. Shriveled corpses of villagers and the beasts they kept as livestock and pets provided the first wordless testimony to our allies that we were dealing with no ordinary enemy. A stiff wind could blow apart many of the dried out carcasses.
It was telling how much of a hard line there appeared to be between the lands targeted by the thralls and those left untouched. It spoke of deliberate organization that no thrall could manage on its own. The Advent must have not wanted to risk inciting Wregor earlier than necessary by sending their mindless foot soldiers too close to their border. Combined with the fact northern Jegeru had been spared the worst, I concluded that the Advent did not want to stretch themselves too thin. And now that they knew we were coming, they had recalled their forces to wherever they based themselves.
In another eight days our army crossed what had to be the emptiest piece of civilization in Orda, even counting the occasional survivors someone stumbled upon. Those pitiable bastards were often scared of their own shadow. There were extensive signs of skirmishes in the larger towns we passed, but no true threat remained for us to battle. Sometimes we encountered thralls that had been too injured to do much more than crawl, giving Ghevont a chance to absorb a bit of their nismerdon prana.
Speaking of which, being as it was a major campaign, Wregor brought filled and unfilled prana crystals and the casters to use them. The official stance proposed by me and Odet was for no one else to gather nismerdon prana, but in practice we knew the emperor had surely ordered for his casters to secretly collect what nismerdon prana they happened upon. All we could do to counter the underhanded tactic was to make certain that the forces we directly commanded did their part to eradicate the alien power before anyone else got to it. Viable for now, but impossible if we faced several thousand enemies at once.
Two days later, we received word from the sailors in Watawara that the capital city was a reflection of what we already experienced, only on a larger scale. They even had to deal with dozens of lively thralls, though nothing they couldn’t handle. Regardless, I wanted to take Ghevont to the city and use his crystal to seek out any sign of a noteworthy presence. Not only that, survivors in the city would be wary if not outright aggressive toward Wregor soldiers traversing their city, so a dragon knight showing up with a group of Jegeru scouts should prevent too many misunderstandings from occurring.
So early in the morning I flew my group south while the rest of the army turned eastward. Aranath reached the port city’s sky in a couple of hours. As we waited for the scouts to catch up, I had the dragon fly right over the rooftops, canvasing the ground with sight and crystal. It was so odd to see a recently thriving capital look as if only enterprising scavengers frequented the place. The wall of roots Odet told me about still circled the inner city, though much of it looked dried out and fragile. Still, to make it easier for people to get across the barricade, I urged my mount to burn any segment where his fire would not easily spread.
My instruction could do nothing about sections of the city that had already burned, which included a great deal of the palace. I planned on scouring the five-story construction for clues of the royal family’s whereabouts, but the charred pile of rubbish convinced me to let the engineers handle it when they got the time. Anyway, no nismerdon prana emanated from it.
I met with the commanders of the Wregor sailors when the winged Jegeru soldiers arrived. As expected, they informed me that most of the survivors they found acted cagey around them, some going as far as refusing to come out of their hiding places. In any event, the appearance of the Jegeru soldiers should help clear up that matter. Then came the question of what to do with them.
With an army here and the thralls having left the city over a week ago, those leading the survivors saw little reason to board a Wregor ship and either stay there or sail to an island, possibly never seeing their homeland again. They thought it better to gather supplies and hold out in the defensible parts of the city. It was a foolish position to take, but at least many did not entrench themselves to the idea. Having a dragon in the bleak background helped them to see that lingering for long invited trouble, especially when no one on my side wanted to squander manpower protecting those who could otherwise find safety elsewhere.
Nonetheless, more than a handful of Jegeru guardsmen, peasants, artisans, and a minor noble or two insisted on staying in the city to make sure their people returned to a semblance of governance that was not Wregor. I let them have that much, but made certain they knew we could not spare many men to defend them should the Advent somehow get past our lines. They accepted the risk.
I returned to the primary army in the late evening. Our course took us closer to a nigh boundless region of hills known as the Bin Konai-tsu, or in the shared tongue, the Song Swept Hills. Apparently, when the wind blew just right, certain places in the bumpy region produced persistent rustling, whistling, and whooshing noises. This was enough to qualify as music for some people. To each their own.
In tactical terms, if the Advent preferred to scatter and hide, then they would go into Pukam. If they were ready for a fight, then the hills were the superior choice. Hills were harder to burn down in mass. Hills provided higher ground for those on the defensive. And while not as effective as a forest, hills could still force a large army to split its forces, leading them to unavoidable waylays.
Confirming that
they hid in Pukam would also pressure Shia and Yong-Yin into getting their acts together. For now the best Shia promised do was send some of their small army to their side of the forest and wait to see if anyone came out of it. As far as they were concerned, taking in thousands of refugees was their main contribution to Jegeru’s plight.
As well as dealing with their inflow of refugees, Yong-Yin’s main problem was their need to spend weeks organizing which city-state would bear which responsibility. The quickest action they agreed to take was to dispatch some of their ships to Jegeru’s southeastern shoreline and keep an eye out for unusual activity.
Six dawns after rejoining the army, the advancing force had moved near enough the hills for large scouting parties to sweep the region. Aranath covered more “ground” than any griffin squad, but it was one such squad that signaled that they had found something of note. They had come from farther north, so we followed them for twenty or so miles until they dove to a wide valley between large mounds of tall grass.
At first it looked as though the grass transitioned into a large patch of dirt at the base of the hills, but a closer inspection revealed that this dirty area was the remnant of a battlefield. Plant life was a lifeless brown or charred black by fire. Thousands of bodies littered the ground, though “bodies” was a generous word. Most were little more than delicate husks within plate armor or lighter attire. For what must have been weeks, eviscerated thralls and gray roots provided the only cruel companionship to this decimated army.
Quite a few of the ashen corpses were seemingly amassed next to an invisible wall in the shape of a massive rectangle. Under the burn marks, tattered clothing, shadows, and dust of former souls were the etchings of a life absorption rune. The missing king or a general in league with the Advent no doubt led these soldiers to this trap. I expected other duped armies faced a similar fate somewhere among these hills… And that’s indeed what we found.
The Dragon Knight and the Light Page 43
