by David Weber
Bahzell nodded slowly, cradling his tankard between his hands on the tabletop while he considered what Trianal had said.
“And not a one of their young did you see?” he asked after a moment.
“No, and that was another strange thing,” Vaijon replied. He looked more worried than Bahzell was accustomed to seeing him, and his blue eyes were distinctly unhappy. “I’ll admit it…bothers me when their young come at us, but it bothers me even more when we take one of their villages and their are no young-or females-in it. That’s another reason I’m sure Trianal’s right about their having planned the entire ‘battle.’ They had to have sent their young and their females away ahead of time, which means a couple of things I don’t like to think about.”
“Ah?” Bahzell’s tilted ears invited him to continue, and Vaijon shrugged.
“First, they’re trying to protect their young, and they’ve never worried about that before. Everyone knows ghouls don’t care about that-Tomanak, they eat their own young! But this time, they’d sent them away, which can only mean they were deliberately protecting them from us.
“Second, they knew we were coming far enough in advance to send them off before we ever got there. How? We were over twenty miles away before we made our night approach march, and we’d been moving the other direction for two days. We’d even bivouaced ‘for the night,’ in case any stray ghouls were wandering around in our neighborhood, before we turned the men out for the attack. So either they spotted us on the way in and managed to organize the removal of all their females and their young-and you know how hard it is for even a ghoul to catch one of their young, Bahzell, much less round up all of them! — on the fly, or else they decided to evacuate their ‘noncombatants’ ahead of time simply because we were in the vicinity. I don’t know which would be more unnatural coming out of a ghoul: the ability to respond that quickly and flexibly, or the forethought to evacuate just as a precaution!”
“Vaijon is right,” Trianal put in, and his expression was even more frankly worried than Vaijon’s had been. “And that’s part and parcel of the way they broke off, too.” He shook his head. “I think it’s obvious they let themselves get too focused on my prong of the attack-probably because of our horses-and didn’t realize Yurgazh was there until he hit them, but when they did realize he was there, they immediately turned and ran.”
“So they’re fighting smarter,” Arsham murmured, and Trianal nodded.
“Fighting smarter and in greater numbers than they ought to be,” Vaijon expanded. “There shouldn’t have been that many males in a village that small, and they didn’t have anywhere near enough food animals to support them there for very long. If I didn’t know it was impossible-and given what’s been happening lately, I don’t know it’s impossible-I’d say some sort of ghoul…warlord, for want of a better term, is managing to impose some kind of discipline on them. It’s as if they’d deliberately pulled all of the ‘noncombatants’ out of the area and transferred in more fighting strength, instead.”
“Now, that’s a thought I’m not so very happy to hear,” Bahzell murmured.
“Nor I,” his father agreed, frowning as he scratched the tip of one ear thoughtfully. “And no more will Kilthan or Baron Tellian, come to that.”
“They’d have to be able to mass in substantially greater numbers before they could hope to actually defeat us in battle,” Vaijon said. “Their tactics are getting better, but ‘better’ is a purely relative term when you’re starting from what we normally see out of ghouls. I’m not saying they won’t continue to improve, and they’ve already moved well beyond their usual scream-and-leap approach. But until they get a lot better than anything they’d shown us yet, they’d still need a crushing numerical advantage before they could realistically threaten a field force the size of ours.
“Unfortunately, they can hurt us a lot worse than we’d anticipated, whether they can actually beat us or not…and we don’t know what kind of numbers they’ll eventually be able to assemble. Given what we saw in this instance, I’m inclined to think whatever ghoul military genius is managing to coordinate them may well be able to concentrate even more of them next time. And even if he can’t, as Trianal says, we can’t sustain that kind of exchange rate over the entire summer’s campaign.”
“No, and if it should happen as how there truly is a ‘military genius’ on the other side, I’m thinking he’s not so very likely to be letting us cordon off the Hangnysti from the rest of the Ghoul Moor,” Bahnak observed sourly.
“I think it’s certainly going to be harder to clear the riverbank and keep it that way, at any rate,” Trianal said grimly.
“Yurgazh’s report makes it clear he’s of the same opinion, Sir Trianal,” Arsham said.
“Well, then.” Bahnak’s chair creaked as he leaned back and tipped it up on its back legs while he surveyed the others. “I’m thinking we’d best not let it come to that.”
“And would it happen you’ve a notion as to how we might accomplish that, Da?” Bahzell inquired, and his father snorted harshly.
“It’s in my mind we’d best nip in there quick and hard,” he said. “It’s a rare strange ‘military genius’ as is able to exercise his genius if it should so happen someone’s been and disconnected his head from his neck. So I’m thinking it’s time and past time as we saw to that little thing.”
“I could agree with that, Your Highness,” Arsham said dryly.
“Good.”
Bahnak let his chair’s front legs come back to the floor and leaned forward over the table, folding his arms on its top.
“Trianal, your uncle’s after being stuck fast in Sothofalas, and well I know it. Would it happen as how you could be calling out more of his armsmen of your own authority and get his approval after?”
“Within limits.” Despite his youth, there was no hesitation in Trianal’s response. “I can call up the Riding’s first levy, as long as I don’t keep them in the field for more than sixty days. Any longer than that, or calling for the general levy, would require the Crown’s authorization, which we might or might not get, given the balance on the Great Council.” He smiled fleetingly. “And, of course, I’d better be able to give Uncle Tellian a very good reason for why I did it when he asks!”
“And the first levy would be giving you, what?”
“If I call up all of it?” Trianal shrugged. “About another eight thousand men.”
Bahnak nodded, his eyes distant for a moment as if he were doing sums in his head. Then he turned to Arsham.
“It’s checking with Gurlahn I’ll have to be, but it’s in my mind as we could put that many more-or it might be even ten thousand more-of our own into the field without pulling too many hands out of the fields or off the canal.”
Arsham looked a bit dubious, but he didn’t challenge Bahnak’s numbers. Gurlahn Karathson, Bahnak’s only living brother, had been Hurgrum’s chief of staff for over thirty years. If Bahnak was being overly optimistic, Gurlahn would lose no time in bringing him back to reality.
Bahnak’s ears flicked in amusement, as if he’d read Arsham’s mind.
“It might be as we won’t be coming up with quite so many as all that,” he continued, “but I’m thinking as how another sixteen thousand men might just come as a bit of a nasty surprise to yon ‘military genius.’”
“Hit them with a bigger offensive than they’ve seen out of us yet?” Vaijon murmured. “Enough bigger to punch through anything they could pull together to stop us?”
“I’ll not be going so far as all that,” Bahnak said grimly. “We’ve too little idea of exactly what’s been after changing. But, aye, it’s in my mind to cut a broader swath than we’d first intended. I know we’d planned on taking the rest of the summer to be clearing the river line, and I’ll not pretend I won’t begrudge the kormaks to pay for so many more men. But I’ll not be frittering away anyone’s men at this nasty rate if it should happen there’s a way to avoid it, and I’m thinking this is most likely the best
way to do that. It’s go in hard and fast, we will, and take the ground of our choosing, and if it should so happen our ‘military genius’ is minded to be doing anything about it, then it’s fighting on our terms he’ll find himself.”
Bahnak Karathson, Prince of Hurgrum and of the Northern Confederation of Hradani, flattened his ears and showed his teeth as he let his gaze circle the council chamber.
“And any ghoul as chooses to cross swords with the likes of hradani infantry and Sothoii cavalry on ground of their own choosing…well, I’m thinking he won’t be making so very many more mistakes.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Varnaythus of Kontovar stood in his carefully concealed, thoroughly warded working area, hidden at the very heart of Sothofalas, and looked about him at the bookshelves, the scrolls, and instruments of his profession. Lamps burned in the corners of the scrupulously neat, meticulously organized chamber, and he allowed himself to contemplate the level of skill, training, and raw power it represented. He’d vanquished more foes and taken more lives than even he could remember as the price of amassing that skill and power. Over the many years of his life, he’d defeated more than a dozen rivals for his position on the Council in duels arcane, adding the spoils of their libraries and their research to his own, and among the handful of wizards who might truly be counted his peers, he was respected and feared as a subtle, dangerous foe-a master not simply of the art but of craftiness and guile-it was best not to challenge. Yet somehow tonight’s contemplation of his place of power, the very core of his strength and the unassailable proof of his skill and cunning, failed to provide the sense of assurance, of being the controller and manipulator of others’ fates rather than the victim of his own, that it normally imparted.
As one of the handful of wizards powerful enough to claim a seat on the Council of Carnadosa itself, he was…unaccustomed to feeling such acute anxiety. Very few beings capable of entering the mortal plane of existence frightened him. Wencit of Rum came rather forcibly to mind as an exception, of course. Although, to be fair, “ fear ” might not be precisely the right word for what he felt in Wencit’s case. Perhaps self honesty might be a better term, since there was no doubt in his mind what would happen if he and Wencit should ever meet, and he was in no hurry to embrace that experience, but he was scarcely alone in that. And while he was being fair about things, he wouldn’t have cared to face one of Tomanak’s or Isvaria’s champions without a handy escape route carefully planned for and laid out in advance, either. There was such a thing as prudence, after all. Demons could be a nasty handful, too, although even the brightest of them were thankfully stupid and easily diverted into attacking a properly prepared glamour. One wouldn’t care to try to fight one, perhaps, but if one had taken the elementary precaution of preparing ahead of time, evading even the most powerful demon was scarcely what one might call difficult. On the other hand, he could remember at least two practitioners of the art who hadn’t prepared properly ahead of time, but those were rather…messy memories upon which he tried not to dwell.
Yet even allowing for all of the prudence and preparation in the world, he hadn’t lived as long and accomplished as much as he had without becoming inured to terrors which would have turned the bowels of even the most courageous to water. The art, at the high level at which he practiced it, was for neither the weak hearted nor the weak willed, and now he gathered that will-the will of a wizard lord of Kontovar-about himself before he spoke the final word of his current spell.
A brilliant flash enveloped the working chamber. Had there been any witnesses, they would have been painfully blinded for long, purple-and-red minutes. Even if they’d been warned in time to close their eyes, they would have blinked on tears once they opened them again, and the skins of those particularly sensitive to the art would have prickled and burned as if they’d injudiciously exposed themselves to too much sunlight. But once their eyes started working again, they would have seen that the working space at the very heart of the chamber was empty.
***
It was night on the Ghoul Moor.
The moon drifted overhead, floating in and out of star-spangled cloud rifts, and a cool breeze sent tree branches curtsying in the darkness. Yet there was no darkness in the clearing, where bonfires roared and crackled in snapping showers of sparks at either end of the treeless space. There had been trees here once, and not so very long ago, but they’d been felled with stone axes and hewn into massive, sap-oozing timbers. Their branches, leaves, and twigs had helped fuel those bonfires, but the timbers had been cut and notched, laid up to form a massive, open-air dais for the trio of hulking thrones set upon it.
A shape sat in each of those thrones. Roughly man-shaped, each of them hideous in its own fashion, they loomed monstrous in the dancing, seething firelight. The smallest would have stood at least ten feet tall, had it risen from its throne; the largest was half again that huge, and glaring crimson eyes-pupil-less and touched with a poison-green sheen-glowed like lava in the firelight.
One of them was covered in shaggy, rank hair, thick and snarled with knots. It had huge, six-fingered hands, the fingers tipped with scimitar-shaped claws longer than most daggers, a snouted face with foot-long, boarlike tusks, and a misshapen skull crowned with a six-foot spread of needle-pointed, bulllike horns. Another was hairless, with a thick, plated hide, an extra set of arms, and legs half again as long as they ought to have been. Each plate was crested with its own jagged, two-inch stalagmite of horn, and it wore the head of some nightmare-designed hunting cat with a direcat’s fangs that glittered with the same venomous green luminance dancing in its eyes. But the third-the largest of the three, seated on the central throne-dwarfed that cat-headed horror, for it was an even more nightmarish parody of a hradani. Its hands were enormous, even for something its size, and armed with claws that put its horned companion’s talons to shame. Crawling patterns which might have been tattoos, but were not, moved constantly across its skin in the firelight, like a nest of mating serpents, and that same pestilential green clung to it, wavering about it in a foul, deadly nimbus. It sat there, naked and hairy, blood running down either forearm and painting its massively muscled chest in shining red as it raised the tattered torso of a ghoul and ripped huge, dripping chunks of flesh-chunks larger than a grown man’s head-from it with sawtooth teeth.
The ground before the dais was littered with gnawed and splintered bones, and the clearing beyond was packed with other ghouls. The creatures crouched on their knees, bending forward, faces pressed to the ground as they prostrated themselves worshipfully, and something like a wordless, animallike hymn rose from them. The hairy, horned-headed creature rose, striding to the edge of the dais, and raised a clawed hand. It pointed to one of the kneeling ghouls, and the indicated creature looked up, eyes huge, then squealed as three of its neighbors seized it and dragged it forward. The captive twisted and fought wildly, but strong and fast as ghouls might be, its captors were just as strong, just as fast. And terrified as it might be of its fate, its fellows were even more terrified of their fates if they should allow it to escape.
They didn’t.
They reached the edge of the dais, the waiting monster reached down with one misshapen hand, and its selected victim gave one last, squealing shriek as that hand closed about its throat and lifted it effortlessly into the air. The ghoul squirmed and twisted frantically, its own claws raking uselessly at the hand which had plucked it from the ground. They opened gaping wounds in those strangling fingers, that massive wrist, but those wounds closed again as quickly as they were torn, and the horned creature only roared with hideous, hooting laughter and tightened its grip. Something crunched noisily, the ghoul’s struggles ended abruptly, and the creature returned to its throne, pulled one of the dead ghoul’s arms from its socket with casual, appalling strength and a hideous sucking, tearing sound, and began to feed upon its fresh meal.
A light flashed suddenly on the dais, like some lost lightning bolt. It was less brilliant than the one
which had filled Varnaythus’ working chamber in that self-same instant in far distant Sothofalas, well over four hundred leagues to the north. Yet it was bright enough to dazzle eyes no one had warned, and an edge of fresher, sharper fear added itself to the ghouls’ worshiping chant.
The creature which had just begun to feed paused, then grunted contemptuously at the diminutive, human figure that stepped out of that glittering billiance and resumed its interrupted chewing. Its cat-headed fellow only leaned back with disinterested red eyes, resting one set of forearms on the arms of its crude throne while it picked bits of ghoul from between its own fangs with the clawed hand at the end of one of its upper arms. But the biggest, hradani-shaped creature tossed aside what was left of the ghoul it had been devouring and glared at the newcomer.
“You’re late,” it rumbled. Granite boulders screaming their agony as they were crushed in an iron vise might have sounded like that voice, and the stink of death, decay, and blood blew on its words, washing around the human before it.
“No,” Varnaythus replied. His merely mortal voice seemed small and frail after that sound of pulverized stone, but he gazed calmly up at the monster before him, and no witness could have guessed how hard it was for him to appear unshaken. “No, I’m not. This is precisely the time I told you I’d be here.”
“Do you call me liar? ”
The creature’s roar shook the night like a terrier shaking a rat and it half-rose from its throne, yet Varnaythus stood his ground.
“That wasn’t what I said. I said this is the time I told you to expect me here. That happens to be the truth. Whether you were mistaken, misspoke, or lied is more than I can say. And, frankly, of very little interest to me.”
