“I…yes, great Lord.” The Nameless One bowed as if in modesty.
Wood nodded, not troubling to find out the details. It was remarkable that the man had been able to accomplish even that much against the opposition that he faced here. “Well done. But now restrain yourself to a defensive posture for a time.”
“As you will, Lord.”
Wood dug heels into the cold flanks of his riding-demon, and into the ear that it unfolded for him, he whispered the needful word. With a roar of sound they rocketed into the air. Once above the treetops, he again turned his mount’s massive, sharp-beaked head into the north. This time he was content to fly at low altitude, and he did not urge the griffin to anything like full speed. He meant to test the strength of Ardneh to the full this night, and to destroy it if he could, without undergoing a desperate risk himself. But there was no great hurry about it; he did not expect to be able to take Ardneh by surprise. To Wood, the something-out-of-the-ordinary that was Ardneh was coming clearer now, bit by bit in tantalizing glimpses like the one he had had of Abner’s concubine. Subtle hints of splendid powers, and of a beauty that could not, unless it were a lie or under some evil bond, could not be any part of the Empire of the East.
After watching Wood’s violent departure, Abner started to mouth an informal curse, thought better of it (Wood would never be so foolish as to try to kick Abner in the shins), and instead walked a quick tour of inspection around the perimeter of his little camp. Satisfied that his sentries were properly alert, his reptiles well guarded by burning torches, and that no other business needed his attention at the moment, he went back to his tent.
She had returned to the couch. Amid disordered draperies she stretched out in a pose half sleepy and half sensual, like some fine catlike beast. Her eyes were nearly closed, but there was a tremor of candlelight along the length of their golden lashes, and Abner knew she was looking at him, as he brought down his palm to snuff the candle out.
Now for a little while the Constable forgot the world outside his tent. Soon, however, there came some sounds of movement at its door, hesitant and tentative sounds, but threatening unwelcome interruption. He could picture the Nameless One there, or some of his officers shifting their feet, listening to ascertain if anything urgent was going on inside. They were bearing news but were uncertain of its importance. They thought the Constable should be told, but were afraid of his anger if they bothered him at the wrong time for something that turned out to be trivial. Would they go away? No, at any moment now they would work up the nerve to stop their exchange of silent gestures with the sentry and call out to be admitted.
He got up and without bothering to dress went to the door, and in displeased tones demanded: “What is it, what do you want?”
The darkness was greater in the tent than just outside, and even as Abner spoke he saw there was no sentry, only a figure taller than the Nameless One or any of his officers, tall as Abner himself. Abner was alerted before his answer came, was already moving back to where his sword hung in its scabbard on the tent’s central pole.
“My wife,” the tall stranger said, matter-of-factly, and drove in a sword-thrust that no man could have seen coming, much less avoided, in that poor light. But neither could the stranger see Abner well, and the blade did no more than slice tent-cloth and splinter innocent wood.
Abner had his own sword in his hand by now, and his lungs were filling for the bellow that would rouse the camp, when other screams shattered the night outside. “Rally to me!” roared out the Constable, and cut at the dim figure of his adversary, missing as his attacker had.
Now the man was inside the tent, and suddenly the darkness was no longer deep. Some neighboring tent had burst up into flames, almost explosively, and sent a tawny flaring light into the Constable’s. The noise outside had mounted up as well, sounds not only of fighting but of panic, and at the moment that augured ill for the Eastern cause. Abner’s place was outside, but his way was barred. His second thrust at his foe was parried with impressive speed and strength; the man blocking the doorway was certainly not going to be readily brushed aside. The enemy cut savagely back at Abner’s legs, a blow that might have taken one off clean if it had landed; Abner dismissed a half-formed idea of turning and cutting his way out through the tent wall, to reach and lead his men. The first moment he turned his back upon this enemy would be the last he lived.
“Charmian,” Abner called softly, in a moment’s lull after the next violent passage of arms. The next words he meant to say were strike at him from behind, but before he could utter them, something made him aware of the treacherous blow coming at the rear of his own skull, something hard and heavy swung by thin girlish arms. Abner started to turn and block the blow, realized that the sword would get him if he did, and tried to throw himself on the floor and roll from between his enemies, knowing even as he did so that he was too late. And he wondered, even as the sword came butchering between his ribs, how he had ever thought that the East, whose essence was treachery, could ever stand.
Speeding at treetop level to the north, Wood dreamed briefly of glory. If he could return to the Emperor with the jewel in his possession and the crushing of Ardneh to his personal credit, certain key members of the Emperor’s council might be persuaded that Wood would be a more effective Emperor than Ominor…
The taste of that thought was delightful, but it was a sweetness forbidden until the coming battle with Ardneh had been won.
It was an easy matter for Wood to cast his vision ahead to where the two fugitives rested. They were in some kind of cave, and the protection of Ardneh could be sensed around them. Wood could see how to reach them. It turned out, however, that reaching them was another matter. No sooner had he turned his mount directly toward the fugitives than a wind sprang up in his face. The wind quickly rose to a shrieking intensity, and Wood realized at once that its energies were more than strictly physical. It buffeted the griffin-demon and tried to turn him back. Wood dug in his heels. His mount snorted flame and continued to make headway. Then came a gust of superb violence. The demon-steed was halted in his airborne gallop, shot flying upward like a windborne leaf, sent skidding and pawing along a scudding firmament of clouds. The psychic energies that were the stuff of wizardry came forth from Ardneh’s stronghold in a torrent to match that of the driving air.
Even under the spur of Wood’s threats and incantations, his steed could make no headway, and soon he was forced to let it turn and ride before the blast. Most onlookers would have thought his situation precarious indeed, but Wood was not greatly perturbed. He had expected more subtlety on Ardneh’s part than this. The wind was driving him back momentarily, but it should not be too difficult to cope with.
Muttering words that seemed to be torn uncompleted from his lips by the twisting wind, Wood called powers to his aid. From odd places on the earth and under it he called up a motley horde of demon auxiliaries, the strongest force he could assemble in one time and place at a few moments notice. Ardneh must fall before this group should he dare to try to stand and fight them. If Ardneh would not fight he must retreat, and yield the two he was protecting.
The wind had slowly died as Wood had ceased to challenge it. Now, when his ill-favored troop of demons was fully assembled, grimacing and cackling like gigantic reptiles as they circled Wood on various shapes of wings amid the flying murk, he reined his mount in a wide circle and once more charged into the north.
The shell of demonic forces now surrounding Wood and his mount kept out the wind at first, when Ardneh tried to force them back again. Like some Old World missile the knot of Eastern power that Wood had formed around himself pushed its way through the blast. But the wind now rose to a new height of violence, and black clouds hurtling through it struck like fists upon the demons’ shell. And now from Ardneh’s striking fists there lanced out bolts of lightning. Like the wind, the lightning was deeply charged with energies beyond the physical range, and each bolt was well aimed. Some flew at the demons surrounding Wo
od, and some were meant for him. His utmost mental agility was needed to detect the bolts that were to be aimed at him while they were still in the process of formation, and to defuse them, drain their power before they flew, when they would be too fast for any mortal man to stop.
Some of Wood’s host of conscripted warriors were fast enough to parry lightning directed at themselves. Nor could they be slain by it, for all their lives were safely hidden elsewhere. But Ardneh’s hail of darts came thick and fast upon them now, painful, damaging, red-hot, impossible to stand against.
The demons’ shell of force was pierced and broken, and once more Wood’s powerful mount was gripped by Ardneh’s wind-blast and hurled back. The griffin was flung twenty kilometers downwind before the hurricane abated enough for Wood to once more summon his demonic outriders around him. Whipped and half-stunned they came, mountainously cringing, shrinking their physical volumes as much as they could in order to make less conspicuous targets for his expected wrath. With words of terrible power Wood lashed them forward, northward, once again. This time he himself remained riding his griffin in a slow circle in this area of greater safety; trying to think, trying to probe ahead and understand.
By his arts he saw his demons driving north, beyond the clouds of driving mist that lay between. To meet them now came Ardneh’s lightning, this time a single swordblade, flickering, walking along the energy spectrum through all the bands where demons had their half-material existence.
Yet again Wood’s troops were thrown back, in fear and agony; and now at last they had found the enemy more terrible than Wood, and however he cursed and threatened they would not go into the north again. He sharpened his incantations yet more, wreaked suffering upon his quivering vassals, and banished them to hidden dungeons till they should be useful once again. Now, however, he was calm in all his curses and punishings. He no longer raged. He saw now that a little more effort from his demons would not have helped; they were simply not strong enough to stand against Ardneh.
How could Wood have so grievously underestimated his enemy’s strength? Had Ardneh somehow managed a tremendous accession of power recently?
It was not simply that Ardneh was powerful enough to defeat them. Most shattering was the realization that the devastating defense had not even occupied Ardneh’s full attention. While watching the last defeat of his demon-troop, Wood for the first time had managed—or had been permitted—to perceive the extent of Ardneh’s world-wide activities. It was a frightening disclosure. Ardneh could not have possessed such strength for long, Wood realized, or the East would have lost the war some time ago instead of now thinking itself on the verge of victory.
In the form Wood’s vision took, Ardneh appeared in the guise of a tall, powerful man, striding through a pack of curs that swirled snapping and growling vainly around his legs. The dog named Wood received no more attention and effort than was necessary in order to beat him off; meanwhile Ardneh’s chief attention was directed somewhere else, somewhere Wood’s dream-perception could not follow.
Lies, Wood told himself, and felt somewhat relieved; lies. Propaganda, put into his mind to intimidate and weaken him. But he had no evidence that it was lies. And if such a trick could be worked on him, and he could not tell it was a trick, he might well be facing an enemy who could destroy him.—in the nick of time he realized that Ardneh was coming at him for the kill—
His host had been dispersed. He turned and fled, the lightning-bolts pursuing him downwind. Wood lived through it, although his demon-steed was struck so violently it lost the power of flight. All of Wood’s arts that remained useful to him now barely availed to save his life, to let him tumble from his falling mount into rain-sodden bushes, amid a scene of wild storm and waving branches. Bruised and shaken and winded, but not seriously hurt, he realized that Ardneh had departed, and that he himself was within a kilometer or two of the camp where he had left the Constable.
Limping and cursing his way through the marshy grass and rain, Wood knew that the ultimate powers available to the East would have to be invoked.
VIII
They Open Doors, They Take Down Bars
Wood, stumbling on scratched and weary legs toward the Constable’s camp, rehearsing in his mind what he might say to make his arrival there appear less inglorious, was within a hundred meters of his goal when he heard the surprise attack led by Chup burst out ahead of him.
After the first shock, Wood was not really surprised. The night belonged to the West, and it was not the first time an Eastern position thought secure had been taken unawares. He paused, trying to determine what was going on ahead. The enemy force seemed quite small. Ardneh was nowhere near. Wood had no functional demons to call on at the moment, but still, after his moment’s assessment of the situation, he pressed on at a hurried walk. His personal anger was aroused, instead of the rest and food and drink he had been looking forward to, here was only another fight. But his rage was cold and eager. The smart of his defeat by Ardneh would be eased by victory here; instead of appearing humbled before the Constable, he would come in as a savior. There were fires ahead, and screams of panic. The East was not doing very well at the moment.
It was for good reason that Wood was accounted the greatest wizard of the East. When swords were out and blood was spilled, it was difficult for any magician to raise an effective spell—the Nameless One even now lay bleeding out his life ahead, Wood’s extra senses told him—but Wood’s arts were still powerful, even now when his best powers had been scattered and his most potent energies exhausted. He still had one vital advantage, that of surprise, fully as important for the magician as for the soldier….
On legs that no longer felt tired and injured, Wood approached the camp, where shadowy figures ran and fought before the burning tents. It took him a moment to make sure that there was no Western wizard among the attackers who might be capable of serious opposition to Wood’s spells. The fat one who had earlier, with Ardneh’s help, overcome the efforts of the Nameless One was there, but that meant nothing to Wood, as Ardneh himself was still absent from the scene.
Standing in the shadows of a tree near the edge of the burning camp, a vantage point from which he could see without readily being seen, Wood pronounced one lengthy word and began to make small gestures with one hand. The fat Western wizard was the first to fall, whirling round almost gracefully, elaborate talismans spilling from his hands like so much trash, before he tumbled like a chopped-through tree. One after another, as they came into Wood’s view, the other men of the Western raiding party fell, backs arching, twisting in convulsions. There seemed to be less than a dozen of them in all, even fewer than Wood had thought at first. They could do nothing against Wood because he gave them no time to find him with their blades. One of their leaders came closest. A tall man, he emerged from the Constable’s tent with bloodied sword held high. Seeing Wood, or somehow sensing his position, the Westerner charged like a maddened beast. But though his long strides brought him so close that Wood had to dodge back at the last moment from the killing blade, it was the Westerner who fell.
He was the last, except for one or two who might have managed to run away; in his depleted and exhausted state Wood did not care to make the effort to be sure of that. All the others lay on the earth, their convulsions quieting as Wood led them smoothly into ensorceled slumber. Those he had felled were still alive, and he had a good reason for keeping them so.
The Eastern soldiers who had survived were gathering in the center of the camp once more. Wood called to a junior officer and charged him with seeing to it that the prisoners were gathered together and kept alive until they should be needed. But no sooner had Wood finished giving these orders than he looked up to see that the golden girl he had earlier glimpsed in Abner’s tent had emerged from some hiding place or other clad now in a silken robe, and was raising a dagger over one of the prone Westerners.
“Forebear, girl!” Wood called out. “We have far weightier business than your grievance against this wret
ch, whatever it may be. Where is the Constable?”
The golden woman threw down her dagger and turned to Wood. Now she was the picture of submission. “Alas, my lord Wood, the Constable is dead. At the last minute, when the enemy had already entered the camp, he saw the danger and met it bravely. He did what he could, but it was not enough.”
Wood nodded, unsurprised, then looked around and raised his voice. “Where is the senior surviving officer, then?”
When that man had made himself known, Wood questioned him: “Have you enough able troops to defend this site until the dawn? There can hardly be a dozen live Westerners within ten kilometers of us at the moment. I will be available to help in an emergency, but not for keeping watch. There is another task upon which I must concentrate. I want to know if I can safely relax my vigilance to do so.”
“Aye, aye, my Lord, I think so. We have at least twenty men still on their feet. These Westerners can move soft as demons. Our sentries had their throats cut—”
“That should keep their successors awake, at least for a few hours. Now I am going to set to work, and you must detail two men to fetch and carry for me. That you may cooperate intelligently with me, I will give you some explanation.” He paused; the woman was watching him, round-eyed, and some of the soldiers were gawking dazedly. Wood took the officer by the arm and led him to one side; and he made his own image change in the eyes of the gawkers, to something that was not fit to look upon, and they hastened about their business. Then to the officer Wood said: “I have tonight met Ardneh face to face, and have found his strength grown awesome. I can only guess at how he has managed to augment his powers; now they are enough to tip the scales of the entire war against the East.”
Empire of the East Page 47
