by Glen Cook
Running feet slapped stone floors.
Haroun fired. The bolt slammed into O Shing’s heart.
The dark man drew his sword and smiled his smile. Now there might be time for Bragi and the west. He was sad, though, that he hadn’t found Mocker. Where the hell was that little tub of lard?
He couldn’t know that his bolt had removed the only obstacle to Pracchia control of Shinsan. His action would have an effect exactly opposite his intent.
He fought. And broke through, leaving a trail of dead men.
He stayed to find and free Mocker.
He remained at liberty long enough to bloody the halls of that fortress, to learn that Mocker wasn’t there, and had never been. Long enough to convince his hunters that he was no man at all, but a blood-drinking devil.
THIRTY: The Other Side
The Old Man watched dreamily as the Star Rider reactivated the Power and opened a transfer stream.
A gang tumbled through immediately. A bewildered boy and a maskless Tervola followed. Curses pursued them. Then a javelin flickered through, smashed into the Tervola’s skull.
The Old Man and Star Rider froze, stunned. Then, cursing, the bent man scuttled after the boy. Catching him, he demanded, “What happened?” Panic edged his voice.
Everything was going wrong. The leukemia victim had expired. The Mercenary’s Guild had cleansed itself. There had been no time to replace Pracchia members. Now Chin, his most valuable tool, lay dead at his feet. “Help him!” he roared at the Old Man, before the Fadema could answer his question.
The Old Man knelt beside the Tervola. It was hopeless. The javelin had jellied Chin’s brain.
“Ragnarson,” the Fadema whined.
“What? What about him?”
“He crossed the steppes. He made an alliance with Necremnos. He came down the Roe and attacked from boats. He captured the Fadem. We barely held on till transfer time.”
The others began arriving. They milled around, trying to comprehend the latest disaster.
“Move along! Move along!” the Star Rider shouted. “Get to the meeting room.” Badalamen came through. He looked dashing dressed as a desert general.
“Who’s this?” the bent man demanded, indicating the boy.
“The fat man’s son. His wife got away.”
“Take him to the meeting room.” He kicked Chin’s corpse. “Incompetent. Can’t get anybody to do anything right. Argonwas supposed to be ready for war.” Pettily, viciously, he used the Power to murder the Fadema’s soldiers.
He asked the Old Man, “How will I ever get out of here?” Then, “Drag the bodies to Norath’s pets.” He kicked Chin again.
While working, the Old Man slowly put together the thought that he had never seen his master behave this irrationally.
He wandered to the meeting room once he finished, arriving amidst a heated discussion.
The setbacks were gnawing at Pracchia morale. The stumbling block, the man responsible for the delays, was O Shing. He wouldn’t move west. Nor would he be manipulated.
“Remove him,” Badalamen suggested.
“It’s not that simple,” the Star Rider replied. “Yet it’s necessary. He’s proven impossible to nudge. If he weren’t more powerful than Ehelebe-in-Shinsan.... Most of the Tervola support him. And we’ve lost our Nine-captain there. He died without naming a successor. Who were the members of his Nine? We must locate them, choose one to assume his Chair. Only then can we take steps against O Shing.”
“By then he may have moved west voluntarily,” Norath observed.
“Maybe,” the bent man replied. “Maybe. Whereupon we aid him insofar as he forwards our mission. So. We must proceed slowly, carefully. At a time when that best serves our western opponents.”
“What about Argon?” the Fadema demanded.
“What can we do? You admit the city is lost.”
“Not the city. Only the Fadem. The people will rally against them.”
“Maybe. Badalamen.”
The born general said, “Megelin has been stopped. It was difficult and expensive. It will continue to be difficult and expensive if El Murid is to be maintained. The numbers and sentiment oppose him. But it can be done.”
“The point was to weaken that flank of the west. That’s been accomplished. Continued civil war will debilitate the only major western power besides Itaskia.”
“There will be nothing left,” Badalamen promised.
“Win with enough strength left to invade Kavelin,” said the bent man. “Seize the Savernake Gap. Make of yourself an anvil against which we can smash Ragnarson when we come west.”
After the meeting the Star Rider went into seclusion, trying to reason how his latest epic could be brought back under control. At last he mounted his winged steed and flew west, to examine Argon.
He drifted over the war zone and cursed. It was bad. Not only had Ragnarson done his spoiling, he had extricated himself cheaply. The Argonese were too busy with the Necremnens to pursue him.
He fluttered from city to city, hunting Chin’s little fat man. He finally located the creature in company with Ragnarson. He raced to Throyes, gave instructions to order the fat man to eliminate Ragnarson before Ravelin’s army returned home. When Badalamen finished Megelin he could move north against limited resistance....
Then he butterflied about the west, studying the readiness, the alertness, of numerous little kingdoms. Some, at least, were responding to Varthlokkur’s warning.
He was pleased. Western politics were at work. Several incipient wars seemed likely to flare. Mobilizations were taking place along the boundaries of Hammad al Nakir too, in fear that El Murid might reassume his old conqueror’s dream.
The raw materials for a holocaust were assembling.
He nudged a few places, then returned to his island in the east. He began hunting Chin’s replacement.
Lord Wu was initiated into the Pracchia minutes before Badalamen announced his defeat in Kavelin. Wu showed no enthusiasm for his role. Badalamen blamed a lack of reliable intelligence. Both men, supported by Magden Norath, peti-tioned the return of the Power.
“What can I do about it?” the bent man demanded. “It comes and goes. I can only predict it.... Fadema. Are you ready to go home?”
“To a ruin? Why?”
“It’s no ruin yet. Your people are still holding out. Necremnos’s leaders are too busy one-uping each other to finish it. A rallying point, a leader, a little supernatural help, should turn it around. Badalamen. Go with the Fadema. Destroy Necremnos. They’re too stubborn ever to be useful. Then head west. Seize the Savernake Gap. Throyes will help.”
Badalamen nodded. He had this strength, from the viewpoint of the bent man: he didn’t question. He carried out his orders.
He was, in all respects, the perfect soldier.
“What supernatural aid?” the Fadema demanded. “Without the Power....”
“Products of the Power, my lady. Norath. Your children of darkness. Your pets. Are they ready?”
“Of course. Haven’t I said so for a year? But I have to go with them, to control them.”
“Take a half-dozen, then.” He buried his face in his hands momentarily. To the Old Man, who sat silently beside him, he muttered, “The fat man. He failed. Or refused. Throw the boy to Norath’s children.”
A pale vein of rebellion coursed through the Old Man as he rose.
The boy gulped, shivered in the Old Man’s grip. He stared across the mile-wide strait. A long swim. With desert on the farther shore.
But it was a chance. Better than that offered by the savan dalage.
Shaking, he descended to the stony beach.
It was the turning of the year and, the bent man hoped, the shifting of luck to the Pracchia. Wu would have finalized plans for the removal of O Shing. Badalamen’s report on the war with Necremnos would be favorable....
The Pracchia gathered.
Badalamen’s report could have been no better. Norath and his creatures had tu
rned it around. When Shinsan marched, the Roe basin would be tributary to the Hidden Kingdom. The holocaust had swept the flood plain and steppes. Argon was closing in on Necremnos.
But Lord Wu didn’t show. The Pracchia waited and waited for Locust Mask to come mincing arrogantly into the room.
Later the bent man wearily mounted his winged steed. His flight was brief. It ended at Liaontung.
THIRTY-ONE: Baxendala Redux
“Man, I don’t know,” said Trebilcock. He surveyed Ragnarson’s captains.
“What’s that?” Kildragon asked. Reskird was still grey around the gills from wounds he had received at Norbury. His left arm hung in a sling. Badalamen had overcome a dozen champions in fighting free.
“Might as well wait for everybody. Save telling it twice.” Trebilcock approached Ragnarson.
“Where’s your shadow, Michael?”
“At his father’s. Learning bookkeeping.”
“Last summer took the vinegar out of him, eh?”
“His father claims it gave him perspective. What I wanted to say.... I should tell everybody. Old friend of Aral’s dad showed up while I was there. First man through the Savernake Gap this year.”
“Oh? News?”
Ragnarson didn’t ask if it was bad. There wasn’t any other kind these days.
“Go ahead. Latecomers can hear it from somebody else.” He pounded his table. “Michael has got some news.”
Trebilcock faced the captains, stammered.
“I’ll be damned,” Bragi muttered. “Stage fright.”
“I just talked to a man from Necremnos.” Michael eyed his audience. Half he didn’t know. Many were foreign military officers. Most of his acquaintances were recovering from wounds. Gjerdrum still couldn’t walk without help. He’d had a savage campaign of his own.
“He says Argon is kicking Necremnos all over the Roe basin. The Fadema reappeared with a general named Badalamen and a wizard named Norath. Since then everything’s gone her way.”
A murmur answered him.
“Yes. The same Badalamen we whipped a couple months ago. But Norath, even without the Power, was the real difference.” He glanced into the shadows where the Egg of God lurked. It seemed excited. Did it know Norath?
“Magden Norath?” Valther asked.
“Yes.”
“I heard about him in Escalon. The Monitor exiled him for undertaking forbidden research. Everybody thought he was dead.”
“He’s running some nasty creatures ahead of the Argonese army,” Trebilcock continued. “The worst is called a savan dalage.”
“Means ‘beasts of the night’ in Escalonian.” Valther interjected.
“They’re supposedly invulnerable. They prowl at night, killing everything. Aristithorn has only found one way to control them. He lures one into a cave or tomb and buries it.”
“I hope our friends from the Brotherhood can find a better solution,” said Ragnarson. “I expect we’ll get a look at them ourselves. Anything else, Michael?”
“Necremnos probably won’t last through spring.”
“Anything about our friend in the mask?”
“No. But the man said there’s been a palace revolution in Shinsan. O Shing was killed. The Tervola are feuding.”
“Varthlokkur. That good or bad?”
The wizard stepped up behind Ragnarson. “I don’t know enough about what’s happening to guess.”
“Mist?”
The woman sat in an out-of-the-way seat. When she rose, the foreigners gawked. Few had encountered a beauty approaching hers.
“It’s bad. They’d overthrow him only if he were too timid. The Tervola have grown anxious to grab Destiny. They’re tired of waiting. As soon as they’ve decided who’ll take over, they’ll be here. The shame of Baxendala.”
“Michael, bring this Necremnen to Varthlokkur. Varthlokkur, if you can get in touch with Visigodred. ask him to send Marco to see what’s going on around Necremnos.”
Visigodred had returned home after Badalamen’s defeat in Moerschel. He was a genuine Itaskian count and couldn’t abandon his feudal duties forever.
“I’ll have Radeachar tell him.” The wizard left with
Trebilcock. Varthlokkur was developing a liking for Michael simply because the man wasn’t afraid of him.
Varthlokkur had lived for centuries in a world where mere mention of his name inspired terror. He was a lonely man, desperate for companionship.
Ragnarson peered after them, frowning. An hour earlier Varthlokkur had asked him to be best man at his wedding.
The pain hadn’t yet eased. Thoughts of Mocker made him ache to the roots of his soul. And in the wounds his friend had inflicted.
Wachtel insisted he had healed perfectly, yet he often wakened in the night suffering such agony that he couldn’t get back to sleep.
The temptation to drink, to turn to opiates, was maddening, yet he stubbornly endured the pain. Other voices whispered of his mission.
He turned to the Nordmen baron who was the Thing’s observer here. “Baron Krilian, haven’t you people found a candidate yet?”
Ragnarson hadn’t visited the Thing since his eastern expedition. There hadn’t been time. Derel Prataxis handled all his business with the parliament now.
“No, Regent. We’ve gotten refusals from everyone we’ve contacted. Quite offensive, some of them. I don’t understand.”
Ragnarson grinned. Men like Baron Krilian were why. “Anybody interested?”
“The Kings of Altea, Tamerice, Anstokin, and Volstokin have all hinted. Volstokin even tried to bribe old Waverly to push him in committee.”
“Good to hear you and the old man agree on something.” Waverly, a Sedlmayr Wesson, was the Regency’s whip in the Thing.
“We’re all Kaveliners, Marshall.”
That truism had faltered during the civil war. Previously, the tradition had been to close ranks against outsiders. The Siluro minority had plotted with El Murid and Volstokin. The Nordmen had been in contact with Volstokin and Shinsan.
The Queen’s side hadn’t been above it either. Fiana had received aid from Haroun, Altea, Kendel, and Ruderin. Ragnarson himself had come south partly at the urging of the Itaskian War Ministry.
Itaskia wanted a strong, sympathetic government controllingthe Savernake Gap and lying on the flank of Hammad al Nakir. The then War Minister had been paranoid about El Murid.
Ragnarson turned to the agenda, finally got his neighbors to lend him token forces. As the group dispersed, he asked, “Derel, what’d we get?”
“Not much. Fifteen thousand between them.” Prataxis leaned closer. “Liakopulos said the Guild will contribute. If you’re interested. He says Hawkwind and Lauder are still angry about Dainiel and Balfour,”
“I’ll take whatever help I can get.”
He didn’t expect to best Shinsan this time. Not without a hell of a lot more help than he was getting.
That evening he visited his home in Lieneke Lane, where Ragnar and his new wife were staying with Gundar and Ragnarson’s other children. The real ruler of the household was a dragoness named Gerda Haas, widow of a soldier who had followed him for decades, and mother of Haaken’s aide. Bragi didn’t visit his children much, though he loved them. The little ones exploded all over him, ignoring his guilt-presents to sit in his lap. Seeing them growing, seeing them become, like Ragnar, more than children, was too depressing. They stirred too many memories. Maybe once the pain of Elana’s loss finally faded....
Marco arrived two weeks later. He had overflown the middle east. He brought no good news.
Necremnos had fallen. The RoeIbasin was black with Shinsan’s legions. Tervola had allied with Argon and Throyes. The Throyens were camped at Gog-Ahlan.
O Shing was dead. And, apparently. Chin as well. The latest master of the Dread Empire was a Ko Feng. Varthlokkur spoke no good of him. Mist called him a spider.
“How did they get out?” Bragi demanded. “Marco says the Lao-Pa Sing is still snowed in.”
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“Transfers,” Varthlokkur replied. “The Power has been coming and going, oscillating wildly, for months. They must be sending people through with every oscillation. They seem random, but maybe Feng can predict them.”
“They’ll come early, then. Damn. We might not get the crops planted.”
He planned to meet Shinsan as he had before, at the most defensible point in the Savernake Gap west of fortress Maisak. Baxendala.
Work there had been going forward all winter, when weatherpermitted. Civilians had been removed to Vorgreberg. Karak Strabger was being strengthened. New fortifications were being erected. Earthen dams were being constructed to deepen the marshes and swamps which formed a barrier across part of the Gap. A major effort was being made to construct traps and small defensive works which would hold the enemy while bowmen showered them with arrows, and siege engines bombarded them from their flanks.
Farther east, at Maisak-unreachable now-the garrison were striving to make the Gap impassable there. The fortress had fallen but once in its history, to Haroun, who had grabbed it by surprise while it was virtually ungarrisoned.
Ragnarson didn’t expect it to survive this time. He did hope it would hold a long time.
Every minute of delay would work to Ravelin’s advantage. Every day gained meant a better chance for getting help.
Wishing and hoping....
It wasn’t the season of the west. Already Feng’s Throyen allies were at the drudgery of opening the Gap road. They brought Feng to Maisak a week early.
Ragnarson stood in the parapet from which he had directed the first battle of Baxendala. His foster brother leaned on the battlements. General Liakopulos snored behind them. Varth-lokkur paced, muttering. Below Karak Strabger soldiers worked on the defenses. Fifty thousand men, half Kaveliners. Five thousand Mercenaries, Hawkwind himself commanding. Nineteen thousand from Altea, Anstokin, Volstokin, and Tamerice, the second-line states. The remainder were Itaskian bowmen, a surprise loan. They would make themselves felt.
Wagons swarmed behind the ranked earthworks, palisades, traps, incomplete fortifications. Long trains labored up from the lowlands. Baxendala had been converted to a nest of warehouses.
