Warlords race for power while the final battle looms! (Swords Versus Tanks Book 4)

by M Harold Page

  Now the crowd cheered, as if that was all it took. They had not seen the engines of the Invaders, thought Ranulph, nor the destruction they could wreak.

  King Edward sprang off his perch and crunched over the sand.

  The knights parted and Ranulph glimpsed an almost naked man, his borrowed cloak too short to conceal rope burns on his wrists and ankles. The King’s Catamite – with all the influence that entailed. Ranulph winced. But the man didn’t seem to see him. Instead his eyes followed Edward as he stepped forward. His expression was almost identical to Albrecht's "My Lord Is Crazy" face.

  Ranulph's cheeks burned. The look held more than just an intelligent man's amused indulgence for his rasher friend.

  Now Ranulph understood why a talented young artist had been happy to squire for an impoverished knight.

  And now he knew what it was that Albrecht had tried to say to him when they parted company in the shadow of Clifford's burning siege tower.

  The King stood over Ranulph and put a hand on Steelcutter’s pommel. The gesture seemed to rob the crowd of its collective voice. King Edward’s voice rang out above the slow heartbeat of the turning tide. "And I will be your good lord in peace and war."

  Ranulph relaxed. Now, at last, he could stop floundering at diplomacy and get back to fighting.

  But the King was still speaking. "The Dacre titles and honours are restored – though you will have to help me win back the lands that go with them."

  Not much of a joke, but the crowd laughed.

  Ranulph looked up at his liege lord and felt as if it was for the first time. King Edward Lowther had shrugged off his cowed youth like an old cloak. But there was a light in his eyes and a flush in his face. It was love which had finally given him a backbone.

  "It is time to end the faction fights," continued the King. "All charges against Lady Maud Clifford are declared false. Her rank and titles are restored. As the heiress of a deceased magnate she is a Royal Ward and her marriage is in my gift. And I give her to you, Sir Ranulph Dacre."

  "Thank you, Your Grace," managed Ranulph. But his voice was lost in the cheering. He glanced around. There was no sign of Maud.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Maud struggled to her feet and faced the fog-shrouded ocean. The water soaked her shoes and swirled around her ankles. She gripped the grimoire one-handed. She twisted away from the sea, then whipped back, her long sleeve trailing like a pennon. The weight dragged her hand out until her arm extended with a jolt. Somehow, though, she could not unclench her fingers and let the grimoire go.

  Of course.

  Discarding the book of necromancy would merely enable the Devil to put it into the hands of some other innocent. The hateful volume must be properly destroyed before it seduced yet another soul, not just into Necromancy, but also into the wild harlotry which seemed somehow to be the consequence of consorting with the spirit world.

  She flipped the volume open at "Onanistic Cantrips for those Thwarted in Love" and took a handful of pages. She hesitated. It was hard to damage any book, even one so evil. But the cold wind at her back was there to remind her of Hell.

  She tore at the parchment then let the breeze scatter the fragments over the water.

  A spell offered her Discovery of Treasures Beneath the Earth. Her gaze flickered over the text. An easy spell, if she could find a mandrake root. A twitch of her arm sent the page into the wind.

  Another tempted her with the Vision of the Sylph into All Privy Places, and the possibility of the sight of Jasmine wherever she was. She balled the parchment, trampled it against the pebbles, then kicked it into the waves.

  And there was the spell which had almost killed her. Conjuring an Aerial Spirit as an Assistant Daemon. There was nothing in the text to warn that the sylph would, in the end, turn on the magician. No more than a trap then.

  She tore a strip from the parchment, then another, slowly shredding the fatal page and revealing the words on the next: A spell for banishing the aforesaid spirit on completion of its three tasks.

  Maud smiled despite herself. If she had bothered to read the next page, she would have been spared her near fatal flight over the Rune Isles. A simple error in craft had saved her soul. "God works in mysterious ways."

  She tore out the banishing spell, then saw the next page: "Invocation for Restraining the aforesaid spirit, should the Banishing be interrupted."

  She had to read the familiar words twice: "Harm me not, vile spirits, for I am in the embrace of the God of the Elements."

  #

  "Lady Maud!" Ranulph’s voice boomed across the pebbled beach.

  Maud didn’t look up from her grimoire. Here was a prayer straight out of the Scripture, provided without comment, listed as if it were just another spell.

  The big knight crunched closer.

  Of course, "The Devil lays traps for the clever." She frowned. It would be a lot easier to redeem herself if only the Creed were more logical.

  Ranulph arrived in a clatter of pebbles.

  Maud rose, brushed down her skirts, and looked seawards. The scattered fragments bobbed and swirled with the movement of the foaming, icy water. "There is something you need to tell me, is there not?"

  Ranulph flushed the colour of his blood splattered shirt.

  "No, not about lying with Jasmine — "

  Ranulph gaped. "How did..?"

  " — I mean, whatever it was you were trying to tell me when you abducted me."

  "I — " Ranulph crashed into the shallows. "God's teeth, Milady!" He stooped to snatch at the floating sheets. The position drew his hose tight across his muscular rear. "Good men will die because of this."

  Maud’s face warmed despite the cold air coming off the Ocean of Thule. Her eyes narrowed. Was such lust a temptation, or a gift of nature? It all depended on your theology.

  Ranulph straightened and held up the wad of parchment. The salt water had made short work of the ink. "Well, you certainly are following in saintly footsteps. Saint Guthrum stole the Great Runes. Saint Ignatius stole the Tolmec magic. Now Saint Maud does away with what’s left."

  "What?"

  He waded back towards her. "The grimoire’s wrecked, so now she decides to listen!" A wave caught up with him and swirled around his boots. He didn't seem to notice. "The Tolmecs – the people of the Land of Black Glass? – had high magic until Saint Ignatius stole it." He stumbled, righted himself. "No Rite of Incineration. Our priests took notes, went home without a captive sorcerer to burn, and the Tolmec magic just… stopped."

  The sheer magnitude of the deception hit her and she laughed. Illogic was one thing – Maud had to admit that she herself did not always behave with… perfect rationality. A downright untruth was another.

  Suddenly it was as if she were in a new world, one where Sin and Repentance had no meaning. She bit back her laughter. "Let me guess," she said. "One of the spells contrived to make great blocks of stones float."

  Ranulph’s hands hovered just short of her overgown, as if courtesy alone prevented him from shaking her. "Yes…"

  She bit back a giggle. It was all rather amusing, really. "And, another spell drove off mosquitoes and other insects?"

  Ranulph’s frown deepened until Maud had seen bears with more forehead. "Yes. And St Ignatius passed them off as miracles. How did you…?"

  "There's more." Maud riffled through what was left of the book of magic. "A spell for restraining spirits. Do you recognise the prayer?"

  "God's teeth!"

  "A Ritual of Purification Against Divers Poisons – one of the Church’s most sacred rituals, and here it is under Cantrips Useful in the Commission of Adultery." She looked up. "It seems that parts of this grimoire replicates the Book of Rites almost word-for-word. Or is it the other way around?"

  "So there is hope after all." Ranulph grinned and his hands fell by his side. "I do not think I could bear to hate you. You will use magic to aid our cause."

  "Don't you see?" Maud wasn't getting through to him. She tried again.
"We. Our. Religion. Is. Fake. Every prayer with a measurable effect, and each miracle cited as proof of God’s Agency in the World, is no more than magic cribbed from ancient sorcery."

  "Yes,” said Ranulph patiently. “That is what I was trying to tell you."

  She touched his arm. "Aren't you shocked?"

  Ranulph shrugged. "Nothing happens that is not God's will. When magic grew too strong, He sent the Saints. When the Church they spawned grew too strong, he sent you."

  "I am on a mission from God?" Now Maud did giggle. She closed the book. "Well, you shall have your sorcery."

  His frown returned. "That paltry fragment which remains."

  "Have no fear, my Lord." She kissed him lightly on the lips. "I am highly motivated to find more magic, for as you will recall I will not go to my marriage bed except as an equal."

  "And where do you propose to look?" he asked.

  Ranulph sounded grim, but his burning gaze was distracting. Maud closed her eyes and started thinking aloud. "Saint Ignatius worked his miracles as an old man, decades after his Voyage to the West. Long…" She held up her hand to stop Ranulph interrupting. "Long after the Tolmec magic stopped working. It follows that the Church keeps records of all the magic it suppresses, and can unbind and bind it again at will."

  "If you say so," grated Ranulph. "But, where are these records?"

  She opened her eyes and gave him her best smile. "Not a record. A library. Where else would the Church keep them, but in Holy Mount?"

  Ranulph seemed to relax. "I have stormed more impregnable places, guarded by better men."

  "And that really does not bother you?"

  Ranulph patted his sword. "It does not seem to bother God."

  Maud laughed. "Well, it will take more than one knight and a handful of barbarians. You should speak to the King. Once everybody has seen my magic — " Ranulph's eyes twinkled and she felt like an idiot. She blushed. "You think that I should not flaunt my powers?"

  "I think my reputation alone might just suffice for this." Sir Ranulph offered her his arm. "Shall we present ourselves to His Grace and the Emperor?"

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Carved cherubs blew trade winds across the Great Door of Kinghaven's Council Chamber.

  Jasmine's lips quirked. The carvings were crisper than she remembered, and without the ancient musket holes, but they were still the same doors that had transported her on childish adventures, lulled by the muted sounds of her father doing business in the room beyond.

  Sails billowing, fat-bellied ships braved the wooden seas. From their decks, outsized merchants scrutinised the horizon for threat or commercial opportunity. Meanwhile, smaller figures of mariners coaxed the vessels between jagged rocks which dripped with harpies and sirens, or piled on the sail to outrun dragon-prowed longships bursting with axe-wielding barbarians.

  Father was gone now, and yet to be born, though – be honest – this fork of history would spawn other families in place of the Klimts of Kinghaven.

  Similar muffled conversation came from within, but now she could discern General Hamilton shrilling over General Woodsman's bass rumble. Into the gaps flowed Ibis-Bear's soothing tones.

  Behind her, her escort shuffled impatiently.

  Jasmine remembered what she had come to do, why she had brought these handpicked veterans to this place. Her her jaw set. She took a step forward.

  A plump Security Worker shifted to block the door. "Credentials, Field Marshal."

  His blue-uniformed comrade started rolling a cigarette. "We have orders,” she said "Very strict orders." She smirked.

  "Of course," said Jasmine. She reached into her pocket and the Stormgun just happened to slide off her shoulder.

  Beside her, Mary Schumacher scrabbled in the pouches of her dispatch rider utility belt. "Gosh. I know I have it here… hang on…"

  Jasmine caught the Stormgun as it fell, pivoted forward and drove the muzzle into the first Security Worker's paunch. He croaked and buckled.

  A reverse lunge and the butt slammed into the cigarette-roller's abdomen.

  "…got it!" Schumacher held up her card triumphantly then saw the unconscious workers. Her eyes widened. "Gosh!"

  Jasmine cocked her head at Sergeant Hawkins. "These two look like they've been drinking on duty."

  The veteran tutted. "Very serious, Field Marshal. You and you – take these morons to the lockup."

  Jasmine chambered a slug, returned the Stormgun to her shoulder and nodded. Her guards threw open the doors. Leaving her people behind, she strode into the Council Chamber and into the combined glares of the three Generals.

  It was the same casual hatred she'd faced when they put her on trial, but this time an empty chair awaited her at the head of the table. Jasmine slid into it and yearned for her Tank Commander's station. She flipped open her notebook. "I won't apologise for being late – there are things to do, and I've been doing them."

  Hamilton glared at her. "You called the emergency meeting. I was busy-"

  "-at a vital Consciousness Raising session with your Post Office Security Workers," completed Jasmine. Hamilton had been spending a lot of time with his enforcers. Evidently he hadn't noticed anything strange on his way from the Royal Castle. She smiled at him. Complacent dog-fucker.

  "I have some proposals," said Hamilton.

  "As have I," said Ibis-Bear. "Though Artillery is my formal remit, I am the acknowledged expert on the hidden spiritual life of…" She lowered her voice. "…these times. I think we need to build a relationship with the local Earth Priestess covens…"

  "I will read them all with interest," cut in Jasmine. "But given aerial reconnaissance reports of an Imperial army at Middleburgh, there are urgent changes to be made:

  "Item: The best shots to be formed into sharp-shooter units.

  "Item: Post Office to conscript local craftsmen and oversee wood and hide cladding of all tanks – apparently the anomaly doesn't affect non-metallic materials.

  "Item: Each Tank battalion to be paired with an Infantry one to create an Armoured Brigade."

  General Woodsman scowled and made to protest, but Hamilton got there first. "These to be led by Tank Majors promoted to Colonels, no doubt."

  "No," said Jasmine. "By whoever they elect."

  "But who will they answer to?" asked Hamilton.

  "Yes," said Woodsman and looked surprised. He scowled at the smaller man, as if blaming him for their agreement.

  “Me,” said Jasmine.

  "You two men might be blinded by self interest," said General Ibis-Bear. "But I think these reforms make sense." She rearranged her wreath of charms and worry beads.

  "I’m glad you understand," said Jasmine. In truth she would probably use Woodsman as a deputy, but only once she'd made him accept her authority. "If I might continue?

  "Item: Artillery to train with solid shot fired line-of-sight. Post Office Security Workers – since they excel at hand-to-hand-combat — to be assigned to each team for last ditch defence."

  "Use my artillery pieces as glorified carbines!" Ibis-Bear practically shrieked. "Never!"

  "Put my people in the front line!" Hamilton thumped the table. "Over my dead body!"

  Jasmine folded her arms. "Those are my proposals. Reject or accept them in their entirety. All those in favour, please raise your right hand."

  Not a single hand raised.

  "Against?"

  Ibis-Bear coughed and fiddled with her worry beads. "I think, my dear," she said, "that though we are happy for you to provide leadership in these troubled times, it would be best if you would be guided by older, wiser heads."

  Hamilton held up his hands. "That was not my reasoning at all."

  Ibis-Bear glared at him.

  The Postmaster General smiled ingratiatingly. "Some discussion is required before the implementation of such sweeping changes. Perhaps they could be integrated with my proposed reorganisation?"

  “Ah yes,” said Jasmine. "Each unit to have an assigned Post Office Politica
l Delivery Worker. Every commander to have a bodyguard of Post Office Security Workers. Oh, and tanks combined with their own infantry to be constituted as a separate arm under, now let me guess, the Post Office… can you see why I might be reluctant to give you your own army –" She held up two fingers on each hand to mimic quotation marks. "'General' Hamilton – not least because you aren't really a soldier?"

  Woodsman shifted uncomfortably, as if remembering the inconvenient fact for the first time. The Infantry General might think aggression was a good substitute for tactics, but he had a healthy dislike for red tape and party hacks.

  One down.

  "Surely we can be consensual, Field Marshal," said Ibis-Bear. "There is a Golden Mean."

  "A compromise, you mean?" asked Jasmine.

  The big woman leaned forward and confided, "There's no need to get sucked into patriarchal power games."

  "But could you really compromise between – say…" Jasmine recalled Ibis-Bear's notoriously bad theatrical production. "- burning a witch, and revering her?"

  "A half-charred half-worshipped witch, is still a dead crone," said Woodsman, and laughed.

  Ibis-Bear frowned.

  "And a half-defeated army, is still a defeated one," said Jasmine. "With no chance of liberating the…" What did the old madwoman call them? "…Earth Priestesses."

  Ibis-Bear’s eyes lit up. "So you do know about the terrible fate in prospect for Maud Clifford, Serene High Priestess of the All-Mother?"

  Jasmine blushed and fought down an un-Field-Marshal-like giggle.

  Thankfully, Ibis-Bear was fiddling with her amulets. She sighed. "You have the certainty of youth, my dear. But perhaps also its wisdom."

  Two down.

  "This farce has progressed as far as I shall allow it," said Hamilton. "You, Jasmine, are nothing without my support, and I withdraw it." He twisted to address his Security Workers. "Arrest her."

  "On what charge?" asked Jasmine, rising.

  "Oh, I shall think of someth-"

  The Stormgun came easily to Jasmine’s hands. She shot from the hip, the recoil flung her half around.