by NS Dolkart
Her words nagged at him all that day and the next. His strategy was a good one – wasn’t it? The Dragon Touched and their allies were over a thousand strong now, with some four hundred warriors among them. The plainsmen who had joined of their own volition now owned slaves and livestock, and fought with as much zeal as any of the Dragon Touched warriors. It was the right way to fight a war, he had come to believe. The only way. They would still be far outnumbered if they faced Ardis now, but with a few more weeks to grow…
The next day, word came from the south. The first towns to ally with the Dragon Touched had been sacked. Ardis was coming for them.
The news threw the camp into disarray. The men who had allied with the Dragon Touched now spoke of leaving to protect their homes. A council of their elders, one from every town and village, came together and demanded that the Dragon Touched do something to protect their families from the Ardismen. There was no question what that ‘something’ might be. Criton hadn’t thought his people ready for a confrontation, but it seemed they had little choice: they had to face Ardis now, before any of their allies could desert.
Hessina said he was being too hasty. Ardis was goading them into an open fight long before the Dragon Touched could be ready for one. Criton agreed with her logic completely, but it didn’t change his calculus. This was as clear a sign as they were going to get. The time had come to prove their faith in God Most High. The Ardisian army was rumored to be two thousand strong – in battle, they would outnumber the Dragon Touched five to one. But if this was what God Most High wanted, so be it.
They turned back southward. All talk turned to battle tactics, and Criton rediscovered his kin’s weakness in harnessing their magic. He had thought his own magical skill limited, after seeing all that Psander could do, but the truth was that he had taught himself a lot. He could summon a light. He could change his appearance, clothes and all. He could fly. The Dragon Touched universally knew how to hide their draconic heritage, and breathing fire came naturally enough, but that seemed to be all. Was it the three decades of repression, or an actual lack of talent that kept them from using their magic as he did?
He hadn’t flown since the battle at Silent Hall, when the high priest of Magor had ended his flight with a single word of command. It had taken him over a month to fully recover from his fall, and he was not eager to take to the air again, but flying would have made for an amazing advantage over the Ardismen now that Bestillos was gone. Ah, well. He could still do it himself, if he found the courage to, but it seemed that there was no hope of his commanding a flying army.
Hessina insisted that his greater magical ability was a gift from God Most High. Perhaps she was right, but he would have rather his God granted these abilities to all the Dragon Touched, so that their enemies’ greater numbers wouldn’t be so devastating an advantage. It was bad enough that nowadays only an eighth of his force even was Dragon Touched.
Their tactical options were limited. Outnumbered as they were, there was no sense in keeping some part of their force in reserve. He would have liked to throw up his hands and say that God Most High would take care of everything, but his allies had no reason to trust in God Most High as of yet, and he needed their support. If he couldn’t find a way to embolden them while demoralizing his enemies, it would be a rout. Or, worse still, the majority of his army that wasn’t Dragon Touched might panic and turn on his people. No, he couldn’t leave the tactics to his God.
It was Bandu who gave him the idea, by pointing out that the food supplies were soon going to run low if they didn’t start eating pigs. There had been a feast after every victory, and after every northern village joined their cause. It was a way of keeping their allies happy; of convincing them they were on the right side of this war. But Hessina had not allowed these feasts to include pork, so the supply of sheep had dwindled while the number of pigs grew. Criton wondered if this was a metaphor for the foolishness of recruiting an army the way they had, and that was when the idea came to him. A metaphor. Yes.
Pigs were Magor’s animal, and the Dragon Touched had access to an enormous number of them. The plainsfolk kept stores of rendered grease that they used to cook their meals. And the Dragon Touched could breathe fire.
Criton sent scouts ahead as the Dragon Touched and their allies marched south. It would take some time to coordinate the display he had in mind, and he didn’t want to be surprised by the Ardisian force before he was ready for it. He hoped the plainsfolk wouldn’t give him any trouble about the use of their pigs.
They did, of course. Criton called their leaders together that night, once they had made camp. The elders listened to him as he explained that he meant to light their pigs on fire and drive them toward the enemy, and they scoffed at him.
“How are you going to make sure they don’t run back at us?” an elder named Paedros asked. “Once you light a pig on fire, there’s no telling which way it’ll run. If you think they’ll all charge toward the enemy, you’re a fool.”
“I’m no fool,” Criton insisted, feeling ever more foolish as he said it. But these were desperate times, and he was prepared to try any tactic, no matter how unorthodox. Their survival depended upon it. “They ought to at least run away from the direction of the fire, right?”
The elders looked at each other. “Probably,” one said.
“But not necessarily,” Paedros added.
“I think they will,” Criton said, “and keep in mind that we don’t need them to charge the enemy in unison. The point isn’t to use the pigs as part of our army, it’s to send a message to the Magor-worshipping Ardismen. They’ll watch their God’s sacred animals burning and squealing and running away from us, and they’ll understand that we mean to do the same to them.”
“And if half the pigs turn on us instead?” another elder asked. “What message will that send?”
“You’ve managed to herd them up to now. Make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“They haven’t all been on fire up to now!”
Criton sighed. “If you like, I can ask Bandu to help you. My wife has a way with animals.”
That quieted them down. Even among the Dragon Touched, Bandu had a reputation as an unpredictable foreign witch. The plainsfolk feared her even more, knowing that this was how their fire-breathing allies spoke of her powers.
“Again,” Criton said, “the goal is to shock the Ardismen into forgetting that they outnumber us. If we don’t face them like we’re afraid we might lose, they’ll start to wonder whether we know more than they do. Let a few pigs run the wrong way – as long as they’re mostly running at the Ardismen, we’ll have gotten the point across. By the time our armies meet, they’ll be ready to run.”
There was silence at first. Criton was not sure whether he’d convinced them – they kept looking wordlessly at each other, as if they were elves and could hear each other’s thoughts.
“That may be true,” Paedros conceded at last. “We can try it, if you’ll compensate us for our lost animals.”
Criton promised that they’d be well compensated in spoils once they defeated the Ardismen, offering them a greater share than they had taken from their conquests so far. It was a fair offer, since they were bound to win such spoils if they defeated the Ardisian army. Once he’d left, he let out a great sigh of relief. He had thought it foolish of God Most High to put him in charge of this army, but maybe he was better at the tasks of leadership than he had realized. That was somewhat reassuring.
In any case, he felt confident in his battle plan. The Dragon Touched and their allies would not fight like a force outclassed, would not stake out a position on some hill and wait for their foes to try to overwhelm them. They would set Magor’s pigs aflame and then charge their enemies, giving no time for tactics and no room for maneuver. They would fight like people who knew that with God Most High at their backs, defeat was impossible. And when they did that, Ardis would believe them.
He couldn’t wait.
17
Gen
eral Magerion
As far as Magerion was concerned, the council spent far too much time discussing the Dragon Touched threat, and not nearly enough talking about the threat from within. The generals argued over how long it was taking to raise their army – which was quite a long time, delayed as they were by the harvest. They argued about the ideal field of battle too, as if they would have a choice, and lastly about who should command the force that faced down the Dragonspawn. Some of the talk was worthwhile, but to Magerion’s mind, a lot of it was meaningless.
The Dragon Touched had moved north, gathering their strength for the inevitable battle with Ardis, so it was probably true that the sooner Ardis marched out to meet them, the better. Still. Most of the council’s disagreements were about ego, not strategy.
Had he still been alive, Bestillos would have resolved these questions easily. He would have dominated the discussion, and doubtless led the army himself. Now that he was gone, everyone wanted the chance to supplant him as the champion of Ardis.
Magerion was the exception. He had never minded the priest’s dominance, nor his greater visibility. Bestillos deserved it, after all, for having led the Great Uprising that put them all in power in the first place. Championing Ardis was a job for someone theatrical, and Magerion was not one for theatricality. He thought the others were overly concerned with the dramatic reappearance of the Dragon Touched, when the death cult of Ravennis threatened to tear Ardis apart far sooner, from the inside.
The cult had grown so rapidly that the other members of the Council of Generals had yet to register its importance. Or perhaps they believed on principle that the Ravennis worshippers shouldn’t be taken seriously, after the way Magor had trounced Ravennis at Laarna. Whatever the reason, they were being foolish. Magerion had been listening to the death cult’s followers, and he had seen yesterday’s confrontation with the priests of Magor. These people were dangerous. Their theology would appeal to the masses now that Bestillos was gone – it already was appealing to them. The army of Ardis had been routed by a dragon, for Magor’s sake. If the dragons’ God was still alive after centuries of abuse, and still so vital that He had summoned up a dragon and a whole clan of Dragon Touched out of nowhere… well, who was to say that Ravennis was really gone?
And if the cult of Ravennis won over the people of Ardis, what would happen to its current rulers?
Magerion had been a young revolutionary during the Great Uprising, when Bestillos had led the people in toppling their king and his Dragon Touched lackeys. The dirty secret of those days was that thousands of Ardismen had been true believers in God Most High right up until the forces of Magor had won – the Magor-worshippers had been in the minority. Perhaps the others had forgotten, but Magerion still remembered how the people had turned on their God and His representatives. Men who had prayed next to their Dragon Touched neighbors in wholehearted devotion had quickly, so quickly joined in the slaughter once the tide had turned against the Dragonspawn. Why shouldn’t something similar happen again, if the followers of this death cult were to prevail?
Yet none of the other generals saw the danger. They were still arguing over who ought to lead the forces that took on the Dragon Touched – it looked like General Xytos might well win that argument, but Choerus and young Scrofa still weren’t letting it go. Magerion decided at long last to interrupt them.
“Why don’t you all go?” he suggested. “All three of you. There is glory enough for everyone, presuming you win. What I ask is this: leave me a hundred picked men with which to defend the city. We have deadly enemies right here in Ardis that we ignore at our peril.”
“Enemies?” Xytos asked. “This isn’t about those Ravennis-worshippers again, is it?”
Magerion nodded, and the other men sighed and rolled their eyes.
“A hundred men,” he insisted. “Then you won’t have to listen to me repeating myself. Besides which, if Magor is with you, you won’t need another hundred. And if He’s not, another hundred men won’t do you any good.”
“And if we are evenly matched?” Scrofa said. “What then? What if Magor and the dragons’ God both watch silently, or if They both intervene equally?”
“Then when you have fought the Dragon Touched into the night, and both sides pull back to regroup, you will be glad not to come home to a city overrun with Laarnan death cultists.”
Xytos smiled. “At first I was concerned about our convening a meeting without replacing Bestillos first, but I see the priests of Magor are well represented.”
“Bestillos was a true general,” General Stellys said, frowning. “He wasn’t on our council to represent the priesthood.”
“True,” Xytos agreed, “but he represented them anyway. And now Magerion appears to have taken up the cause. Have your hundred men, Magerion. We’ll make do without you.”
They moved onto other topics, , and the next day Magerion went to meet with Bestillos’ successor as high priest. He found High Priest Melikon surprisingly optimistic about the prospect of exterminating the Ravennis death cult, especially considering what they both agreed they were up against.
“The people are losing faith, it is true,” Melikon admitted, “and there is some truth too in the death cult’s philosophy. Ravennis was clearly not defeated as we had thought – the miracle of the crows proves that much. But with the failure of our death-prophecies to materialize, and with your men rounding up Crow God worshippers for public executions, this revolution will be over before it begins. Then Ravennis will truly be dead, and the faith of Magor’s followers will be restored.”
The men Magerion picked for his anti-Ravennis cleansing were all either personal loyalists or members of his clan: his sons Mageris and Atlon, his nephews, close friends and distant cousins, all people who owed him their positions in society. Their mission would involve slaughtering their neighbors – he could not afford doubters.
They started with that leftover Oracle, the so-called Graceful Servant. Magerion had expected her followers to keep her hidden until he could torture her location out of them, but he had thought wrong. The Graceful Servant delivered herself to them the very next day, striding up to the Great Temple of Magor as if she believed herself untouchable. She cooperated fully as they tied her to one of the temple’s pillars, and though her mouth was full of prayers to her God, she did not pray for Ravennis to save her. Rather, she locked eyes with General Magerion and prayed for Ravennis to bring His truth to the world, and to grant His followers peace and joy in the world below. It was unsettling. Though an enormous crowd had gathered to view her execution, Magerion felt that she was saying something directly to him. It wasn’t a plea, either – if anything, she seemed triumphant.
He had her flayed. After that, he had her lieutenants found and flayed as well – all those who were known to have associated with the Graceful Servant were put to death in as public and painful a way as possible. The priests of Magor delighted in this, but Magerion grew more and more uneasy as time went by. The Oracle’s followers all did their best to follow her example, praying to their God to reward them in the underworld rather than to save them, and their unnatural bravery was having an impact. Many found the cultists’ attitudes inspirational. It was Laarna all over again: no matter how many of His worshippers they killed, Ravennis only seemed to grow stronger.
The trouble was that Ravennis’ worshippers weren’t universally reviled by the city’s leaders. The priests of Elkinar declared neutrality in the conflict, having received no directive from their high priestess in Anardis to take one side or the other. Without the Elkinaran priests’ help in chasing Ravennis from the city, the Crow God’s worshippers found enough of a safe haven to persist.
To make matters worse, the biggest prize had already escaped him. Narky the Black, the one-eyed slayer of Bestillos, had vanished as if he had never existed. Rumor had it that he had escaped the city even before the Graceful Servant’s death, fleeing under the cover of night. High Priest Melikon might laugh that Ravennis’ champion had f
led in terror, but as far as Magerion was concerned, the point was that he was alive. He didn’t have to be brave to be dangerous. From what Magerion had heard, Bestillos had been shot in the back.
He began questioning Ravennis worshippers about Narky before killing them, but it seemed that anyone who knew anything was long dead. The general had to own up to his poor planning on that front.
Not all the Ravennis worshippers were suicidal, of course. A good many of them practiced their religion secretly, when none of Magerion’s men were around. He would take that. The fact that his men were driving the death cult into the shadows and not the other way around was in itself something to be thankful for. The question was, how long could this situation last?
The army of Ardis had marched off two weeks ago with all the fanfare that that entailed, parading out of the city with three generals at its head. As Magerion saw it, there were only two possibilities now: either Generals Xytos, Choerus, and Scrofa would crush the Dragonspawn and return triumphant, in which case the Ravennis worshippers would likely remain underground for another generation… or else they would lose. If they lost, he was sure the citizens of his city would abandon Magor and embrace the Raven God of Laarna, and if that happened, Magerion’s head was bound to be discovered atop a spear before long.
The Graceful Servant began haunting his dreams. Night after night, he dreamt that he rose from his bed and went to stand below her corpse at the Temple of Magor. Even skinless, even tied to a pillar of her enemy’s temple, there was an awful majesty to her.
“You cannot resist us forever,” she would taunt him. “Ravennis knows your destiny. Ravennis is your destiny.”
When he tried to reply, his voice came out a caw and he discovered that he had been transformed into a raven.
He slept less.
He ordered ten of his men to try to track down Narky the Black, wherever he had disappeared to, though at this point he was not sure what to do with the man once he had him. The Graceful Servant had endured public humiliation, torture, and death, and still had the power to keep Magerion awake at night. He was no longer sure this monstrous cult could be beheaded.
