The Steward and the Sorcerer

by James Peart

  “And leave the Englishmen behind? Longfellow...”

  “One Steward is as good as another, and besides it’s not simply one man you’re taking on, it’s the might of the entire Northern Army, not to mention that being Wade Torn told us about back in Dhu Nor.”

  “The Tochried...” he closed his eyes as his surroundings began to swim out of focus.

  “Daaynan! Are you alright?” She placed her hand on his forehead, felt the heat there and wiped it with the cloth she had earlier produced. She stroked his face with her long fingers, alternately touching his forehead with the back of her hand.

  “It comes in waves,” he reassured her. “I’ll be fine.” He tried to brush her hand away but failed in the attempt, unable to summon the strength. He had been reduced to the status of a nursemaid’s charge, he thought bitterly. A nursemaid who wanted him to give up his pursuit of the Steward as she feared for her own safety as much as his. That might ensure their immediate survival but it only delayed an inevitable future confrontation with Longfellow. Brinemore was a corrosive influence on the Northern Earth. If no one stood up to whoever had authored that corrupting power then these lands, and the lives of those that lived here, would be altered beyond reckoning. He couldn’t tell her that because she didn’t think he could act for himself, let alone others, and, more importantly, she did not understand his purpose. But what he’d told her was true. He was getting better. Yet if that had not been the case he still would not have agreed to flee the city with her. He looked at her now, at her elegantly beautiful face, her long, ash-blond hair spilling to either side of its oval contours, her jade-grey eyes gazing at him with such brilliant intensity. A man could fall in love with such a woman, he thought. A man who had not learned to temper his attraction with stern principles, principles that had nothing to do with chaste morality yet everything to do with the need to serve a higher ideal. The cause of the Druids. It had never been a conflict for him, though he had felt attraction for women before. Oddly, he thought of Simon and how he had made Christopher his cause.

  “You would leave the Englishmen behind?” he repeated what he’d earlier said.

  “They have the Drey Torch and the Meta Crystal to defend themselves with,” she answered in a low voice.

  “They will die without my involvement, Mereka.”

  Her cheeks flushed. “They handled things well in Fein Mor when you were close to death and they had to contend with Iridis. They got him to kill the Furies that surrounded the keep. They told me.” Daaynan gave no response to this. “You think I’m cowardly?” she said. “That I’m only looking out for my safety?” A lock of her hair fell forward over her eyes, obscuring her vision. She brushed it away impatiently. “I am looking out for your safety too. Mainly that...” her voice tapered off.

  When she found it again, she asked “how long have we known each other, Daaynan? A long time. Since before you became Druid. You travelled all the way from Bottom Dell to visit the towns and cities of the east and you came to Carasan and visited my shop. We became friends, never more than that, though your friendship was special to me. I had never met anyone like you. A changeling- a crossling like me- learns to notice differences in people. We are more sensitive to diversity than others, not because of our gift of perception but perhaps as we are punished for being different. Your unique qualities are immediately apparent, even on short acquaintance. You stand out from others because you are guided by high principles. Almost everything you say or do serves those values and people despise you for it. Despise you, Druid, just like they did me. We have that in common. But people also look to you for guidance and certainty, to confirm their own principles. I see it in those boys you took with you, in Simon in particular. I don’t know where you got them from but they would follow you wherever you led them. I see that in them. Daaynan, I...”

  “Shh.” The Druid pressed his finger against his lips. “There’s someone outside.”

  She turned and saw a blur of movement skirt past the edge of the copse, a flash of red and green, headed in their general direction. As it approached they could see that it was a man dressed in citizen clothes, carrying an implement of some kind- a stick with a long wooden shaft looking as if it had been adapted to become a pike. He was tall and thickset yet moved easily on his feet, his gait tense, rangy. He stopped ten feet from where they hid, standing and listening as if trying to identify the source of a sound he had heard. Apparently satisfied, he moved on yet stopped again and made his way back, this time walking directly toward them. They hunkered down behind a screen of plants and scrub, hoping against reason that he hadn’t heard them. Quickly, Daaynan passed Mereka a short blade which he kept concealed in his robes so that she could defend herself, silently cursing his own weakness, wishing he were powerful enough to see off this threat. She gripped the handle, hefted it, feeling its weight, panic flooding through her body. Daaynan was trying to tell her something, wordlessly mouthing instructions to her. She seemed not to understand at first and then she did and her body went rigid in fear. As she watched the man approach, she understood that she could not simply wait for him to discover them. He was likely not alone and on seeing them would raise the alarm. He would have to be taken by surprise. The Druid was ill, not dying like before, but still not able to fight. Others would come and finish him if this man did not. Thinking quickly, she got up on her haunches and circled in a perimeter around the man, moving as silently as she could in the brush. He did not appear to notice her, going forward instead, his eyes focused on the level of the trees. Then he stopped, spying something in the undergrowth, a movement that registered in the corner of his vision. He lifted his pike suddenly and speared it.

  She very nearly cried out but it was only a small dead mammal. She could see that from where she was. She also knew that he was right alongside Daaynan. If he turned even slightly to the right he would see the Druid. She would have to act now, she thought. She gripped the blade handle harder, a fierce determination registering on her features as she considered what she was about to do. If Simon had seen the look on her face in this moment he would have exclaimed ‘That’s Christopher’s mother! That’s Lady Went!’

  Brandishing the weapon Daaynan had given her she rushed at the man from behind, not faltering when he turned to detect the source of the noise- the knowledge that she held the Druid’s life in her hands ringing in her ears- and plunged the blade deep into the small of his back. Reaching around with her free hand she prevented him from screaming out in pain by cupping his mouth, at the same time pushing the blade in further, burying it to the hilt. She felt dizzy when she released him and she looked down at her stomach to discover that she had been impaled on the man’s pike, the long shaft run completely through her, exiting from her upper back, slick lines of blood dropping from the pike onto her cheek and neck and along her arm. He had acted faster than she had allowed for, she thought numbly, unable to feel pain in the shock of what had been done to her. Blood was pouring from her now in thick jets, draining the strength from her body, soaking the earth where she stood. She turned to find Daaynan and collapsed to her knees. The citizen was lying on the forest bed in a lifeless heap, somewhere to her left. In the next moment the Druid was beside her, shaking his head over and over, holding her head to his chest, her face creased against the fabric of his broad-cloak smelling of earth and herbs, her eyes blinking rapidly, swimming in and out of focus.

  “I...want to finish what I was telling you,” she said, blood that was almost black running from her mouth.

  “Don’t speak,” Daaynan told her, “save what little you have left.” His face was a mask of veiled emotions, each one vying with the next yet none able to give full expression.

  “No, I must...I told you the Englishmen...would follow you wherever you led...I would follow you too...into death...and perhaps beyond that. I love you, old friend...” she gasped, beginning to choke. “I wanted to build a life with you...have children and grow old. I always have.” Mereka closed her eyes a fina
l time. Daaynan held her until she grew still, and gently placed her down, something changing in his expression that veiled his true countenance. It was tender and caring, passion and rage all at once, a capriciousness that reached out with an unsteady expression, seeking to change all before him. He rose to his feet, more forbidding now than he had ever looked, the dark folds of his cloak bound tightly against his tall form, his eyes bearing a frightening regard from beneath the shade provided by his hood.

  “Steward,” he whispered. “I am coming for you.”

  32.

  Half a mile east from Cornerstone Pass the bulk of the Northern Army that was stationed in Brinemore stood at the gates of the citadel and warded off swarms of invading citizens that numbered easily four times their size. The battle between the soldiers and the citizenry raged on throughout the remainder of the night and into the morning without respite. They surged back and forth along the edge of the Trenholm that travelled along the old city wall, each side seeking dominance over the other. On occasion it appeared the attacking party had gained the upper hand they needed to burst through the citadel gates but each time the Northern Army fought back with such intensity and aggressiveness that the progress the others had made vanished and they were back to where they had started. The difficulties the Exile Legionnaires were facing with the enemy at the Pass were similar to the ones the defenders faced here. Despite being well versed in warfare and battle tactics they were being overwhelmed by force of sheer numbers. The faces of the citizens looked ashen and withdrawn but wave after wave of them swept against the Northern Army, wearing them down over time. Unlike the Exiles, they didn’t enjoy the use of an incline with which to push back the citizens.

  This morning the Naveen King Iridis stood at the rear of the citizen guard, waiting for the moment to present itself when he could walk safely up to one of the soldiers and place his hand on him. So far, that opportunity had not arrived. Every time it seemed one of his citizens had captured a soldier the enemy rallied around their brother-in-arms and fought them off. Then they fell back against the gates and renewed their defence. It was as if they knew what he was about, he reflected. He could see their Commander- a military adviser of some description who under ordinary circumstances would not be likely to join the fray of battle- issuing instructions to the men under his command who surrounded those that had been captured. At times, whole divisions of the enemy would fall away, leaving the defence of the citadel to the gates. When Iridis’ men charged forward at this unexpected opening, a fresh wave of thousands of soldiers came at them from the side, spilling out from behind the eastern wall of the citadel, hacking and cutting their way through the attacking party, slaughtering every last man and woman. It made no ultimate difference, he thought, smiling. Their numbers were vastly superior to the army’s. It was true that they were made up of men and women, many of them young and inexperienced, yet he could make them do what he liked, have them act in ways that outstripped their ordinary understanding of battle. They fought with the crude weapons he had made them fashion, with swords and pikes, with their hands, if necessary with their nails and teeth. And all of it would be rendered unnecessary when he touched one of the soldiers and the great Northern Army was his.

  Iridis thought about how they could have known of his plan to subvert the soldiery. Whoever had told them had of necessity known of his ability to control more than one mind at once. This was a skill even the Steward’s helpmeet did not have. Could it have been him? Ultimately it did not matter.

  Dawn broke over the city, faint morning light chasing toward a sunrise that lit the looming presence of Mount Atterpeak in a red-gold haze. A grey mist shrouded the immediate surroundings of the battlefield. Thick, motionless and impermeable, it stretched across the gardens like a death pall. The blackness of night drew away from the fog as the golden haze of sunrise bathed the gardens in its brightening hue. When the night had disappeared, the mist came alive; with a slothful lurch, it began to roil against the stone of the citadel walls like some murky broth stirred within its pot. Churning quicker and quicker, it pushed up against the forms of the combatants, lending extra animation to their thrashing limbs.

  A division of the Northern Army fell back against the gates, replaced by a fresh wave of soldiers that crashed down on the citizenry from the east. Line after line of swordsmen, archers and pike bearers plunged into the enemy, swinging, drawing and spearing, their eyes scanning for openings in the mist to better see them as it churned through the gardens, along the wall, and past the citadel gates. Row after row of citizens were cut down, men and women alike, many of them young- punctured, gashed and dying- until the fighters were standing in a bath of blood, its stench rising like hot steam to split their nostrils. Back and forth along the Trenholm they fought, the citizens with their crudely fashioned pikes and swords and halberds driving the soldiers back against the gates. Their superior numbers finally giving them the upper hand, there was no evidence of satisfaction on the citizens’ faces; they accepted it as even-mindedly as they had accepted the slaughter of their women and young fighters, with the passive acceptance of fate. The soldiers withdrew once more, falling back against the gates and the city wall, yet there was no fresh division to replace them this time. A sudden silence hung across the battlefield, a yawning stillness that seemed to stretch the length of the Trenholm. The citizens drove forward into the swirling mist, their pikes and blades catching nothing more than air, their blank features registering surprise.

  Then, without warning, a cry issued from the ranks of the soldiery, deep and resonant, as if beckoning something monstrous that had emerged from the bowels of the earth. The mist parted to reveal a creature standing before the citadel gates where a moment ago there had been nothing. It was a mammoth of a being, at least eight feet tall with a wide, barricading frame, its skin ridged with hard plating, red veins streaking from its neck down along its arms and legs like battle scars. Its booming voice sounded again, curdling suddenly to a shriek that was filled with savage pleasure, blasting the eardrums of those that stood within its immediate range, rippling outward in deafening waves to the edge of the gardens and into the forested section of the Trenholm, bounding and echoing off the trees.

  Iridis gazed at the creature’s menacing form. “Tochried,” he whispered.

  It glanced over the forms of the citizens, peering through the mist at where Iridis stood as if it had somehow heard the King speak. Its brows furrowed in sudden concentration, listening to the inner voice that told him what to do, how it should react to the discovery of the Naveen King. Then it turned back toward the citizenry, its attention focused on the surviving men and women. The helpmeet who controlled it, thought Iridis, had decided not to confront him yet.

  The Tochried lifted its arms...and with a strangling cry brought them down in a vicious arc against the flat of its upper legs. The mist suddenly drew back in a circle around the creature, pulling further and further back, revealing soldier and citizen alike. Like a rippling typhoon, it careened into the forms of the combatants indiscriminately, expanding wider and wider, knocking them flying in its wake. The shriek of the Tochried rose to an ear-splitting pitch and the air blanketing the gardens vibrated in a dangerous thrum, the fighters all along the length and breadth of the Trenholm lifted and thrown like ragdolls, their forms broken in mid-air, their bones splintering as they fell on the blood-soaked earth, their limbs bent and twisted, their skulls crushed and flattened by the impact. The force produced by the creature swelled along the ranks of ally and opponent alike, destroying hundreds then thousands, curving in a wide arc to touch the edge of the battlefield then rebounding in a capacious screech as it rippled back toward the monstrous form of the demon that had summoned it.

  Iridis sent his mind out to the surviving forms, instructing them to rise and stand against the creature, watching in rage as they tried to lift themselves and stand on broken bones, crumple and fall again. He barely noticed the soldiers’ attempt to do the same, having to move clear a
s the undulating wave swept toward then past him, bounding into the woodland, freeing him of its lethal effect. From the corner of his vision he saw the shattered remains of the Northern Army’s chief military adviser, lying in a pool of blood, his body flattened, the men under his command all dead.

  Now the Naveen King and the Tochried faced each other across each end of the battlefield: one an absolute conqueror of worlds that occupied the physical realm, the other a thing that came from beyond ordinary understanding of a world. Iridis could have fled right then, having witnessed the effect of the creature’s remarkable power, and he might even have survived, perhaps to the far border of the Trenholm, had the deadly swell that issued from the Tochried’s form taken that long to snare him. Yet he stood and faced it instead.

  He looked at the creature and smiled. Inside it, he felt/sensed the helpmeet that was called Tan Wrock smile in response. Wrock was not without power. To control a being like this with such magic at its disposal was not inconsequential. Iridis walked toward the centre of the battlefield, stepping over and past the lifeless forms that lay on its soil, untroubled by the possibility of a fresh attack. Wrock was curious to meet him and to do that he must allow Iridis to place his hand on his monster. What he expected exactly Iridis did not know. Did he think there would be a joining of minds, that they would, after a fashion, merge into each other? If so, he would get a rude surprise. Nothing could survive his touch. Even the Druid was likely dead by now, though it had been a long time coming. When this was over he would impale the sorcerer’s head on a pike and mount it outside the city limits for all to see.

  Confident now, striding toward the Tochried, he outstretched his arms in a parody of welcome.

  33.

  Commander Dechs gave the order to fall back. He had heard the demon shriek and it made him glad for the second time that he and his men were not fighting alongside it. They had retreated to the second barricade of the Pass, his archers quickly loading and shooting arrows in response to a sudden lunge by the enemy as, buoyed by the Legionnaires’ retreat, they tried to use their momentum to push clear into the citadel. The crossbows whistled once more as a volley of arrows fired into the heaving mass of citizens. The mist that had settled before the citadel gates half a mile east was not so prevalent in the Pass, enabling the Legionnaires to better see the enemy. Dechs cut his way through a body of surging men- and womenfolk that had scaled the barrier he stood behind, knocking the ramparts clear for their kinsmen behind them to push the barricade to one side. Dozens of them spilled over the obstacle, wielding household swords and crudely fashioned spears, nearly tripping over themselves in their attempt to reach the Commander. He hacked at the forefront of these with his axe blade, cutting the throats of several in one precisely aimed stroke, spearing others with the broadsword held in his imperfect left hand, roaring at his men to do the same further along the barricade. Blood and dirt ran down over his forehead and he wiped his eyes clean with his forearm, glancing downhill. They had killed thousands, yet there were thousands, if not tens of thousands more and those they hadn’t slain never seemed to tire.