The Steward and the Sorcerer

by James Peart

  “There is an enemy at our gates this night, one unlike any you have encountered so far in your efforts to defend the state. Some of you have likely heard rumours, some of it presented as fact. I am here before you now to confirm what is true and to dismiss baseless rumours.” He paused, his eyes travelling over those of the men, trying to summon in his voice a strength of character he did not feel.

  “This enemy presents a threat to the state. He comes in the shape and form of a man yet he is something far stronger than that. He...has the ability to control the minds of men with a single touch. He will use this gift as a curse against us by trying to suborn soldier and citizen alike on his journey to the heart of the city. As I speak he is almost upon us and has likely seized control of much of our citizenry. His goal is to breach the citadel and turn all that he meets along the way into unquestioning subjects, mere puppets to serve his every whim, no matter how trivial or ridiculous. He calls himself Iridis and considers himself to be a King. If he were to succeed in sacking Brinemore tonight, his greater plan is to rule the entirety of the Northern Earth, to rob it permanently of its independence.” Christopher’s voice suddenly strengthened, drawing on reserves of power he didn’t realise he had. “He must not be allowed to take the city. We are the only thing that stands between this man and control of the Northern Earth. Are you with me?”

  A roar swelled across the ranks of those assembled. Many of the troops stamped their boots on the floor or raised their fists in a bold gesture of defiance against this foe they had not yet encountered.

  Christopher lifted his hand to subdue the swell and Simon thought, incredibly, ‘he’s enjoying this.’

  The crowd of fighting men quieted and the man they thought of as their Steward added “Because Iridis now governs at least some of our citizenry, you will be asked to confront them in battle. This may be hard for you but remember this: if you do not, our state will cease to exist and the city will be no more. Those who have been touched by him, their lives are already over and we are in a battle- no, a war- to protect what is left. I trust you will not let me down.

  “Gather your arms and alert the remainder of the Northern Army outside this barracks to do likewise. Iridis and his followers have breached the limits of the city. They are likely close to the citadel. Leave now. Confront and destroy them.”

  As the soldiers dispersed, the features of the individual men almost uniformly tightened in steadfast resolve, Christopher turned to his friend who was staring at him with a look of silent wonderment.

  “How did I do?” he asked, something of the old Christopher returning, revealing itself in a sheepish grin.

  Simon was about give voice to his admiration, then thought twice, retorting instead “don’t lose yourself in the part.”

  “But they’ll do what we want. What I asked them.”

  “They will. Remember, though, you don’t really know what Longfellow is like. They’ll follow you up to a point but some of them must have noticed how different you are, not in appearance maybe, or voice, but in manner.”

  “I was a help. I could help. That’s all that matters.”

  “You were, Chris. I doubt Longfellow, wherever he is, could have given a better speech.”

  30.

  The Northern Army platoon known as the Exile Legionnaires and led by Commander Dechs waited for the Naveen King and his followers at one end of the narrow urban alley known as Cornerstone Pass. Dechs, uneasy with being stationed immediately outside the citadel, had moved his platoon west along the old city wall. His Sub-Commander approached him, drafting a short salute. He stood beside Dechs, saying nothing, his gruff face reflective, allowing his Commander to enjoy the moment before battle before he spoke. Dechs smiled. Jens was a good officer. He possessed the valuable qualities of being both loyal, brave and able to think in combat. A good soldier, he had survived numerous campaigns as a member of the Exiles.

  “What manner of enemy do we face today?” he asked finally. He knew the answer to this as he had heard the news. What he was really asking was this: were they strong and were they clever? More specifically, this meant were they well motivated to succeed and were they well versed in battle tactics? Regarding the former, he would have to say he didn’t exactly know, as their motives were the cause of one man, this Iridis who had somehow brainwashed them into being some form of half attempted soldier, and he was an unknown quantity. Rumour had it that he had confronted the Druid Daaynan and survived and it took guts to take on an agent of magic, though he was also a creature of magic. His instinct and reasoning told him Iridis was a man of tremendous will and that he could interpret that will for whomsoever he wished. So, the answer to the first had to be yes.

  As for the second, he had no reason to suspect Iridis was a clever tactician. In fact, according to what he had heard, a source that traced back to the Vice-Steward, he was something of a despot, uninterested in the details of what he planned, yet powerful enough to forgo the necessity of those details. Perhaps. He would see.

  “Strong, but not clever,” he answered his Sub-Commander.

  “What’s wrong with this battle?” the other asked softly, looking out over the wooded urban park that stretched to the limits of the city.

  “We have to kill our people today, Jens. We have to kill the citizens of Brinemore.”

  There was no answer to this, not immediately at any rate. Jens continued to stare out in the direction Dechs was looking, awaiting instructions. This was a city fight, not a battle fought in fields and valleys and between mountain passes. Their defences would run from the old city wall that surrounded the citadel and the Confederation complex where the bulk of the Northern Army would be waiting for Iridis’ men (comprising half the state citizenry) to Cornerstone Pass through which passage had been closed by barricade. A mass of people seeking to penetrate the fortified complex housing the Council chambers, unable to breach the citadel gates, would have to pass through this alley. Dechs had positioned a number of his troops behind barricades that had been erected at various points along its length. The pass sloped downhill, giving his men a height advantage over the invaders. The backbone of their defence, however, would come in the form of the bulk of the Northern Army that was stationed in Brinemore. Many soldiers were in the eastern Drague Territories and were not due back until tomorrow. Word had been sent to get them home but they needed to move quickly because by tomorrow morning it would all be over. The Northern Army recruits that were here were largely directionless, robbed of their Commanders most of which were still in the East. Karsin Longfellow had given them a rousing speech, spelling out the trouble that had descended upon the city in broad parameters, wound them up with a tale of duty and solidarity and set them loose on the city without so much as an outline of a battle plan. It had been left to Dechs to take-charge of them.

  He sucked wind through his teeth. Could they pull this off, even with the red-veined demon to assist them? It was supposed to be the other way around of course, but he hadn’t believed that for a second. He thought they could not, or at least not in the army’s current state of disorganisation. Then there was the demon to contend with. He had ordered it to stand at the gates to the citadel, half a mile from the Pass, suspecting that it might not obey the order. It did, however, after appearing to make a swift internal decision in the manner of consulting a higher power that weighed what it was being told against its own wishes. He did not trust it not to turn on his men at some point and, guided by some perverse law, perhaps at the time when they were especially vulnerable and would most need support. He reflected on prior attacks on home soil. Over the last half century, Brinemore had been subject to attack on no more than a handful of occasions. The most successful attempt- the only one worth mentioning- had been made by an organised group of tribesmen from an unchartered land in the far west. Their battle strategy had been arranged in the form of sudden sharp attacks and retreats, their numbers constantly changing formation, never staying still and exposed for long. They had succeeded
against a much smaller city, as Brinemore was then, and one less politically and economically motivated. A hundred years before that there were the Punic Campaigns, back in a time when most of the Northern Earth’s city states held a more or less equal distribution of wealth and status and the real power lay with the Druids in Fein Mor. They had numbered in the hundreds then. Now there was only one and he had been styled by Longfellow as a threat to the state. The Commander privately thought this an ugly business. The Druids were not natural aggressors. This one seemed to be fighting for his survival in the face of a blanket-wide ban on sorcery. But, seeing as how Dechs was being paid to do his job and stood at least an outside chance of succeeding, he may as well do the thing right. His task here was to prevent the Naveen King from coming close to any of his soldiers. Should that happen, should he reach even one, he had been told the loyalty of all of his men would be compromised. It had something to do with the nature of the sorcery Iridis possessed. He understood little of it yet the instructions came from the Vice-Steward himself. The Vice-Steward seemed more prepared for this conflict than Longfellow. No matter, he would obey the command, yet in the meantime he would carry out the battle as he had planned as if other things stood equal.

  He contemplated his strategy. They could not fight this battle on the move. There had been no time to set up ditches and channels to fall back into after an attack and retreat stratagem- there had been barely enough to establish the barricade in Cornerstone Pass. Nor had they been able to build traps and snares or lay down trip lines. The Trenholm, a vast stretch of land that was mostly woodland park bordered the citadel at one end of the old city and was completely exposed. The enemy might try to run at them at some point along the edge of the woodland but it would have to go through the Pass in order to gain access to the citadel. They might of course try to punch a hole through the old city wall that protected the citadel but he did not think the Naveen King had the skills to do that. The key lay in the Pass. If they failed here, the citadel would be overrun.

  “Commander,” Jens said, “they’re here.”

  He looked out over the Trenholm and saw the approaching crowd.

  There were thousands of them, perhaps as many as forty or fifty thousand, walking, not marching, in loose formation, garbed in civilian robes of varied colour and cloth. Some of them carried weapons or implements that could be used as weapons- it was hard to see in the moonlight- brandishing them inexpertly as if they had not been trained in their use, holding them in grips that were odd and wrong. As they approached and their faces were partly exposed from under the shadow of the near pervasive darkness, their eyes appeared flat and expressionless, as if they’d been cast in a mild trance. In the thinly provided light of the moon they looked spectral, almost not there.

  Dechs exchanged a look with his Sub-Commander. He’d seen a similar expression on the red demon’s face, the air of someone held in thrall by something beyond his reach. They were moments from engaging in combat and they did not shout or sing out. No cheers of encouragement issued from their ranks. Apart from the creak and rattle of their clothing and weapons, and the impact of their boots on the soft earth, there was silence. Not the silence borne of the kind of voiceless emotions you might expect but the stillness of alien regard, of cold expectation. They approached the city wall like this and Dechs thought what Longfellow had said about them, that their lives were already over, was something he could now believe.

  He turned to Jens, gesturing him to alert his men. “Watch out for the Naveen King...and the Druid.”

  The columns of men and women narrowed and thickened as they approached the Pass, their boots thudding on the forest earth as they cleared the trees of the Trenholm, lifting their weapons as one in apparent salute at their foe. There was no rage evident on their features, no swell of anger among their ranks, as far as Dechs could see. He was used to witnessing the kind of emotion that was absent here, the antagonism that fuelled a regular conflict. He relied on it even, to give his men focus. A practical sort, he saw the advantage to its absence now, a lack of resistance that would lend them the upper hand. There was no need to explain this to his men, however. They understood as he did. Turning to them, he raised one arm, clenching his hand in a bracing gesture.

  Down out of the Trenholm they strode, tracking the old city wall that led toward the Pass, descending the forested incline that sloped toward the wall. As they reached flat ground, they massed together to form a concentrated pack and headed for the Pass. Dechs could see the tools they carried now: some of them held actual weapons- pikes and broadswords (a number of them oversized and old, liberated perhaps from the museums and historical galleys), garden implements such as hatchets, forks and spades that had been welded down to a point and sharpened on whetstones and a few carried hand-fashioned bows and arrows, bearing them inexpertly yet with expressions that told him they had resolved to use them. The moon shone on their deathly faces, illuminating them like waxworks, yet they were moving more quickly now, striding faster and faster, the expression of stillness betrayed by a sudden, lunging rush at the Exile Legionnaires.

  Dechs brought his fist down and roared: “Legionnaires, do your duty!”

  The Exiles shot rounds of arrows into the citizenry as thousands of them swarmed through the zigzag of barricades defending the Pass, moving sinuously past the barriers like shoals of fish, hurdling them, jumping onto the archers, raking their makeshift broadswords along the top of the barriers to cut whoever lay behind, their faces as they swept into the Pass feverish and pale, the animation of battle leaving them otherwise unchanged. As they got too close the archers drew back, allowing other Legionnaires to drive forward with swords and axe blades, plunging into the teeming mass of citizens, swinging and cutting. The battle was joined, Legionnaires and citizenry locked in combat, the maddened populace of the city gaining valuable metres at first, pushing the former back along the walls of the Pass, bearing hatchets and mallets that swung viciously at their foe, gashing and stunning them, penetrating them with their swords and specially constructed spears, overcoming them with sheer numbers. Soon, however, the Legionnaires’ height advantage tilted the fight in their favour. Mounting pikes and halberds at the foot of the barricades designed to confuse the enemy’s footing, they massed at the point of the heaviest concentration of numbers and fought back at them. Jens rallied a group of his men around some citizens who had broken past the first barrier, spearing the one who led them. It was Jens who drove the sword home into the man’s guts, yet before he twisted and removed the blade he looked into the other’s eyes and saw a faint light of recognition reflected back at him. He stared at the man. It was the caretaker of one of the gardens. Toc, wasn’t it? He felt seized in a grip of confusion, a momentary wave of disgust at what he had done sweeping through him. Toc smiled at him in what he thought was relief, released from whatever spell had been cast on him. In that moment he felt a sharp sting in his lower stomach. He looked down, feeling for the source of the pain with his hands, blood dripping from them as he lifted them once more, blood everywhere, escaping his body with disquieting speed. He fell to the earth, clutching his injured stomach. One of Toc’s comrades stood over him with a raised sword in his hand, the sharp end soaked red, bearing it down on him now to finish him off. He would have succeeded had Dechs not emerged seemingly from nowhere; swinging his axe blade with terrific force, he very nearly severed the citizen’s neck with a single stroke. The man gazed at Dechs, uncomprehending, blood gushing from his neck in streaming jets, raining onto the already soaked earth. Wordlessly, he mouthed a prayer. Dechs knocked him back against his fellows with a powerful kick and the attacking party collapsed in a heap against the wall. He turned back to his stricken Sub-Commander, crouching beside him as he produced a strip of cloth and tied it around the wounded area. Jens moaned aloud as the other did his best to staunch the bleeding. “It’ll pass,” he soothed. He threw a glance at one of his men. “Take him out of harm’s way. If he dies, it’s on you.” Swinging round to
face the enemy, he tore into the fresh wave of attackers with his blade, slashing and cutting his way forward down the hill, roaring at his men to drive the foe back.

  31.

  The sounds of battle rang out well past the citadel, past the Gardens of Reflection, the parks and museums and markets, almost to the limits of the city. The soldiers’ cries and clash of weapons sailed past the narrow woodland in which the Druid and the former crossling sat.

  “We’ll have to move from here,” Daaynan told Mereka. “It’s not safe.”

  Mereka looked at him studiedly, something of her earlier alarm filling her expression. In it he saw the expectation that had been building since the Englishmen had left them here. This would not do, the Druid thought. He could not hope to protect them both, not the way he was now.

  “Are you feeling stronger?” she asked.

  “I am recovering,” he told her “but the King is still present within me. Given time, I can perhaps overcome him.”

  “How much time?”

  A wave of dizziness swept through him. He leaned back on the bed of earth, breathing softly. “Not much,” he said finally.

  “I only ask because...”

  He lifted one weak hand. “I know why you ask. This sickness in me might not leave before I can make a difference in this battle, but that doesn’t matter. What is important is that I do what I came here to do. I must find the Steward and put an end to him.”

  Mereka clasped his hand in her own and gently lowered it to his chest. “Daaynan, let’s just leave. Go back to Carasan, or better yet Fein Mor. I could stay with you until you got better. Staying here doesn’t serve any purpose. There’s nothing further you can do.”