The Prince laid out his thoughts. Fire listened thoughtfully, then nodded slowly. “I don’t know as I have a perfect answer for you, Highness, but I been thinking on why in the Good Book, in Genesis, chapters one and two tell the same story of God creating man over again, but different. First time man is made in God’s image. Second time around he’s made from the dust, has life breathed into him, and God makes him that special Garden, where everything is fruitful and it is a paradise. Now, I am thinking that this garden had four rivers, like the sides of your squares, and inside was paradise. If these rivers were your ghost rivers, then the land inside would be full of magick, which is why it was a paradise and why, within the garden, men knew no pain nor hunger. It’s right there in the Good Book, I do believe.”
Though he found Fire’s comment vague, he did find it reassuring. “And the idea of men being able to use that magick energy?”
Fire smiled. “The Good Lord wasn’t the only person who did miracles. His disciples did, too, and their enemies. Seems like it could be used and, being as how there isn’t any prohibition against it, I do believe God intended us to be able to use it.”
“How?”
The Steward shook his head. “That I do not know. I imagine, however, that Rufus found a way in what was said on the tablets.”
Vlad nodded. He had avoided studying or working on translations of the tablets because of what had happened at Happy Valley. Vlad felt certain that whatever Rufus had translated first had, in fact, caused him to invoke Norghaest magick. He suspected, based on what he had later learned about the devices used by trolls to control wooly rhinoceri, that this first magick may have given a Norghaest sorcerer the ability to control Rufus. If the changes in his body were at all accurate, the Prince was ready to suppose a Norghaest sorcerer had actually taken possession of Rufus’ body.
“If anyone else has any thoughts on the matter…?”
“Well, Highness, I onliest know about magick what I done learned for green powder, but I have to reckon that if a man is going to use that reserved magick, he needs a couple things. First, he needs access. Second, he needs to know what he needs to be to use it. Could be he just needs to see himself as a pipe and let it flow through, with him directing it. Or, and I beg your pardon Lieutenant Frost, he needs to know what it tastes like going down, then know where he’s peeing it out to. I reckon he needs to beware of drowning or being eroded and just figuring out how to start drinking it in would be the big thing.”
“Thank you, Nathaniel, for that colorful explanation.”
Bethany held a hand up. “Another thought, perhaps?”
“Please, Lieutenant.”
“We’ve noted different transmission speeds of different ghost rivers. We’ve supposed that it’s all one stream, and the only difference is speed. What if, instead, the magick is different? Think of it like the notes in a thaumagraph. It could be that a stream only produces one note, and to be able to use that stream, you have to be attuned to that note. If someone has only one string, he can only use one flow. If he has two or three, more. It may not be, as Major Woods suggests, a matter of drinking all you can, but to learn what to drink.”
Owen nodded. “The splitting and diversion might not be channeling all the magick, but only the strains our enemy can use.”
“I like that idea. Very clever.” The Prince sighed. “Unfortunately I like it because it limits our enemy and suggests vulnerabilities. Until we can prove they exist, however…”
Everyone nodded slowly. Working from any unproven hypothesis and treating it as true was to invite a disaster of an unimaginable magnitude. For a heartbeat Vlad recalled Lord Rivendell and could see him leading troops in a headlong dash for the reservoir, certain he would take it, able to work magick, and vanquish the Crown’s enemies.
Vlad tapped the map in the vicinity of the Stone House. “Nathaniel, I will, as suggested, want eyes on this. It’s three days out to Stone House, and another to Ghost Lake?”
“That’s what I made it mostly. Maybe half a day more to Ghost Lake.”
“Take one of the Bookworms and a thaumagraph, a dozen Rangers. Head out after sundown.”
Nathaniel nodded. “I will go organize that now.”
“Thank you. The rest of you, please, see to your normal duties. If you do have any thoughts on this, let me know.” Vlad folded the map up. “I’d be content with a few more solutions and a few less mysteries.”
The others left the cabin—save for Bethany Frost. Vlad almost stopped Count von Metternin, intending to fulfill his promise to Gisella to let him know before guns fired that she was pregnant. There will be ample time yet for that. So much here needs to be done.
Bethany Frost took her place at the thaumagraph. Vlad tucked the map away in a desk drawer, bid her adieu, then headed out to the large pavilion built against the exterior of the fort’s southern wall. It jutted out forty feet and the canvas, peaked roof fluttered in the breeze. Baker sat outside, polishing brass buckles. He started to stand, but the Prince waved him back down onto his stool, then slipped into the tent’s dim interior.
Mugwump opened a golden eye.
“You’re more ready for this than I am, aren’t you?” Vlad approached and ran a hand over the dragon’s muzzle. In the months since Mugwump had fought at Happy Valley, his scales had thickened and talons had grown longer with each molt. He still had scarlet stripes and spots, but the color marked where the scales had thickened the most. Though he’d never seen inside a dragon, it appeared as if stripes warded his ribs and spots covered vulnerable joints. The ridges around his eyes had become brightly scarlet, and the bony edges and ribs in his wings matched.
Vlad had wondered for the longest time about the cause of Mugwump’s successful molt and growth of wings. He’d put it down to a varied diet, which included plants and berries which were unknown in Auropa. That, combined with Shedashee knowledge of dragons, suggested they may have had their origin in the New World. While all that made it seem like Mugwump’s changes were part of a natural process, Vlad had concluded that there was more involved.
Specifically, Mugwump had consumed pasmortes—the corpses that du Malphias had reanimated with magick. He’d gobbled them down quite happily, gorging himself at Anvil Lake. But when du Malphias had killed the spells which animated his corpses, Mugwump stopped feeding and vomited back up the creatures he’d just consumed. Just as greedily, he had snapped demons out of the air at Happy Valley.
Subsequent to both instances of his having gorged on creatures of magick, Mugwump had changed physically. Vlad could not help but surmise that the consumption of magick had provided the impetus for growth and change, but he knew neither how nor why. That the visions had shown the dragons to have an antipathy toward the Norghaest explained why Mugwump would feed on the demons, but Vlad couldn’t see any connection between those demons and the pasmortes.
“If you knew, would you tell me?” Vlad shook his head. “I need to know because I have a lot of people here who are willing to face your enemies. The problem is, I know very little about them. Now, the demons, they seem pretty close to gnats as far as you are concerned. And the trolls, I don’t know, bunnies to a hawk?”
The dragon snorted.
“Was that a note of contempt?”
Mugwump shifted, bringing his tail around to hem the Prince in.
Vlad patted his muzzle again. “I’m not worried for you, my friend; I just wish you had a few more of your friends to join us. A dozen or so dragons should deal with the Norghaest very nicely, I should think. Then again…”
Vlad leaned against Mugwump’s muzzle. Other dragons might view the Mystrians as the same bother as the Norghaest. “I’m not sure how they would deal with my maintaining you as a possession. Would they be wolves looking at you as a dog, or would you be a captive that they would want to free?”
A shiver ran down Vlad’s spine. What if there are no other dragons?
Auropeans had been on Mystria for nearly three hundred years and had n
ever reported seeing a dragon. The Shedashee had knowledge of them, but always prefaced stories of them with “In the time of the grandfathers,” which was the Auropean equivalent of “Once upon a time.” The last clutch of wurms born in Auropa had been laid seven centuries before. Is it possible that there have been none here, since then?
Mugwump’s ears came forward, then his head up and around. Vlad ducked as the dragon looked to the west.
A handful of heartbeats later the ground shook. Not hard nor heavy, just a little tremor. The sort of thing one might feel when standing on a bridge over which troops were marching.
Norghaest troops.
Vlad strode to the opening. “Mr. Baker, please see to saddling Mugwump. The Count will be joining us, and we’d appreciate having our swivel guns ready to go.”
Chapter Fifty-two
21 May 1768
Fort Plentiful, Plentiful
Richlan, Mystria
Owen ran to the fort’s parapet. There, on the cusp of the hills northwest across the river, the ground quivered. Greensward pushed up, like a bubble, then burst. Rich, brown earth geysered into the air, piling up around the depression, as if it were a giant gopher hole. Owen shivered, fearing that analogy was not far off the mark, and knowing foul monsters would pour forth.
I’m sure there’s a Scripture that forewarns of such a thing.
A single figure rose from within and easily moved east along the ridgeline. Rufus Branch, with his remaining hair grown long and white, gathered into a ponytail, appeared little changed from when they last saw him. He glanced down as he walked, as if distracted by feeling moist earth and green grasses beneath his feet
Branch wore a black robe secured with a golden girdle around his waist. It had been stripped down from his torso, the arms dangling. The angry red track of a chain scar stood out on his chest and over his left arm. He bore a long staff about a head taller than he was, topped with an ovoid orb which scintillated with golden light.
The hillside continued to boil with undefined forms undulating beneath the sod. Then the earth split facing the fort. White forms, maggotlike, crawled from the wound, glistening wetly. They rolled downhill into a writhing pile. Their skin became translucent and their black heads went from glossy to dull. Mandibles opened wide, then hands thrust up and out through the mouth. The flesh cracked and trolls emerged. The skin folded itself back onto them, and the mandibles curled into their horns.
Vlad appeared beside him on the right. “Dear Lord. There must be hundreds.”
“More.” Owen pointed toward the west. “Cavalry.”
As the Norghaest infantry arrayed itself in ranks, the daunting silhouettes of trolls astride wooly rhinoceri skylined themselves on the western hill crest. Owen only counted fifty, but could imagine more hidden behind the hill. A greater number would just represent overkill, since the rhinos could flatten anything they chose to run over. Sunlight glinted from copper plates on their foreheads, matching the metal on their riders.
“Why there?” Vlad frowned. “He could have deployed on this side of the river.”
“No, Prince Vladimir. Our presence did not allow it.”
Owen spun, recognizing the voice, but knowing that he had to be mistaken. “How?”
Msitazi, Chief of the Altashee, stood at his left hand. Below, on the fort’s parade grounds, a hundred Shedashee braves stood. The air around them shimmered, as if it were a fluid, and seemed to drip from some of them. The drops even fled sideways, back into the shimmer, which quickly evaporated. The warriors—twenty from each of the Confederation’s tribes—had painted themselves red and black in a pattern matching Mugwump’s markings.
They wore leggings, breechcloths, and bone armor chestplates, as well as feathers and bits of shell as decoration. Msitazi had dressed similarly, but had added a red coat and a proper Norillian hat that had both once belonged to Owen. He bore no weapons, unlike his traveling companions, but Owen hardly thought the man with a milky eye defenseless.
“Your people called us the Twilight People because, in the beginning, they would only see us emerging in the twilight. They assumed we moved through darkness. They were mistaken.”
“Great Chief Msitazi, you know far more about the Norghaest than you have told.” Vlad concealed his hands behind his back and bowed toward the Shedashee chieftain. “I need to know what you know.”
The Shedashee ruefully shook his head. “It is not what you need to know, Prince Vladimir, it is what you must understand. You have to learn.”
Vlad thrust a finger toward the trolls. “We don’t have time to learn.”
Msitazi smiled in a way which Owen took to be faintly encouraging. “You do. The Noragah must learn as well.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What you have yet to learn, they seek to remember.”
The sound of a musket-shot spun Owen back around again. “The trolls, Highness, have begun their advance.”
Atop the berm, Nathaniel ran over to the man who had fired and smacked him with his hat. “You damned fool. You have a better chance of dropping a moose at that range. Reload.”
The trolls, arranged in thick ranks, naked save for their furred pelts, marched forward. Two companies, ten ranks deep by ten columns wide, they kept good pace with each other. Only when they hit the river and started to wade through did their cohesion begin to fray. That would have been the point to hit them, but the river’s near edge lay a hundred and fifty yards away, and Nathaniel figured that even with green powder training, that was about five times longer than killing range for a musket.
“Rifles!” Nathaniel pointed with his own weapon. “Ain’t a one of you firing a-fore they get halfway up that slope. The rest of you, thirty yards, no more. Aim for something ain’t covered in bone.”
The trolls splashed their way through the river and came on at a steady pace. They didn’t straighten their lines at all, but it hardly mattered. Coming as they did—pretty much the way Lord Rivendell had sent his troops against the Ryngian fortress at Anvil Lake—they presented a wall of fur and flesh that the Mystrians couldn’t possibly miss. As they grew bigger and mounted the slope, some of the unseasoned troops began getting antsy, and if their nerves got the best of them, they’d not be able to concentrate enough to invoke the magick that would fire their guns.
Off to the right, one of the two small Mystrian cannons fired from the fort. A cloud of smoke jetted toward the trolls. The gunners had loaded it with canister shot. A dozen fist-sized balls flew in a flat arc and hit the trolls’ left flank. Five trolls went down, but two staggered back to their feet. One left most of an arm behind him. He got another thirty feet up the hill before he bled out.
“Rifles, ready!” Nathaniel shouldered his rifle. “Aim. Fire!”
All across the firing line, magick pulsed through firestones and ignited brimstone. The powder burned hot and quick in the chamber, propelling a bullet into the weapon’s barrel. The spiral grooves cut into the barrel’s steel started the bullet spinning. It emerged from the barrel in a gout of flame, flying on a flat arc, and struck its target.
Blood gushed, staining white fur crimson. A few of the trolls paused, probing wounds with black talons with the same curiosity as a man studying a chigger bite. One or two even watched their blood pulse from deep wounds, before collapsing, but for most the shots had passed without notice.
Nathaniel loaded automatically as the gunsmoke cleared. The volley had dropped some trolls. None had made an attempt to move forward to fill the holes in the line. They just marched forward, relentlessly, remorselessly, and implacably.
“Everyone get ready. Aim low. Fire!”
Muskets and rifles shot, sound rippling from the center out. The fusillade ripped into the trolls, cutting the forward ranks down. The cannon boomed again, felling more of them. Almost a third of them lay on the ground, still or thrashing. And yet the others came on, undaunted by the opposition.
Then Rufus raised his staff and spun it over his head. Light pulsed
from the orb and an odd thrumming rattled Nathaniel’s bones. The advancing trolls stopped dead in their tracks, then spun and wandered back toward the river with no order or discipline. Their retreat made no sense, but he had no time to figure it out.
Rufus stabbed the staff into the earth. Light flashed in a flat disk that washed over the battlefield. It outlined the trolls for a moment, rendering their flesh and fur and muscle all but invisible. That vision lasted for a heartbeat or two, no more, leaving a carpet of dead trolls in its wake.
Then the bodies began to twitch and quiver. Their bellies swelled as if the creatures were pregnant. The swelling advanced to knees and shoulders, throbbing and pulsing. Then the trolls exploded, their flesh erupting in a shower of ivory maggots. The worms immediately burrowed into the earth, leaving deflated husks behind.
And, across the way, more, larger worms poured from the hole in the ground. They changed as the others had, and filled the back ranks. More light flashed and the trolls began to spread out. Instead of being packed shoulder to shoulder, they opened their ranks. Whereas before a soldier couldn’t help but hit a target, now he’d actually have to aim—something Nathaniel was pretty sure most of the volunteers hadn’t bothered to do. The lengthened lines also meant the cannon’s fire would be less effective. The only counter to that reorganization would be a cavalry attack.
Don’t matter none. Rufus gots hisself an endless supply of soldiers, and we ain’t got no cavalry.
The reinforced trolls began a second march to the river. Mystrians reloaded. Nathaniel paced behind them, making sure to smile broadly. “Cut ’em down, just the way you did last time!”
Unlike the previous advance, the trolls did not come on in a stately fashion. Once they hit the southern bank they broke into a run. Talons raking the air, mouths open to reveal long, sharp teeth, they sprinted up the slope. The cannon fired again, killing a pair, but not even slowing the rest. Rifles began to bark along the line. Crimson blossomed on trolls, but they kept coming. The muskets spoke in a ragged volley, scattering some of the front ranks.
Of Limited Loyalty: The Second Book of the Crown Colonies Page 41
