He closed his eyes, finding the flickering light he’d punched to make an anchor here, across from the battlefield. It was there. Weak, but he could find it again. To the north he found the first star he’d used on this side of the sea, still shining bright. He tethered them there, flowing smoothly as they traversed the starfield, save for a minor lurch from another star far in the distance. It faded before interfering, and he opened his eyes, standing atop the familiar coastline overlooking the sea.
“Acherre,” a man said, followed by some words in the Sarresant tongue. He was in their field uniform, with a hawk pin on his collar and the same design on his sleeves, a red-faced man Acherre greeted as Colonel Marquand. Twoscore men and women gathered in a tight group at his back, every one mounted, with purple armbands fastened around their uniforms’ sleeves.
“Take us back,” Acherre said, “as quick as you can.”
He closed his eyes again, feeling a wave of exhaustion as he projected his will to cover the top of the bluff. He shifted them, and the star in the distance flickered again, pulling on him as he searched for the faint light far to the south. For a moment the strands shimmered, but he held them in place, and opened his eyes facing the battlefield, surrounded by Marquand’s purple-banded soldiers as they rushed down the hillside, already shouting orders as they rode toward the fight.
70
ARAK’JUR
A Battlefield
The Capallain Mountains, Old Sarresant
He is near.
The voice rang in his ears alongside shouting, and the squelching of soldiers running through melted snow mixed with dirt. Mud and abandoned supplies littered the hillsides. A handful of the soldiers held their ground, or tried to, barking sharp orders at their fellows. The rest fled, some in wide-eyed terror, others unsettled by the sight of panic in their ranks. None gave him more than a cursory glance, though he cut a path through the middle of their lines, heading west where the rest were fleeing north.
He’d left Acherre’s company earlier that morning, ranging ahead to find game and scout the way. Ad-Shi’s lessons had taught him how to cover ground, burning through the spirits’ gifts one at a time, relying on his own stamina to fill the gaps while he waited for the beasts’ favor to return. He could traverse what had taken Acherre, Ka’Inari, Tigai, and Voren a week in a matter of days, and if it took a heavy toll on his body to do it, Ad-Shi’s warnings reminded him such things were fleeting concerns, set against the coming storm. He would have scouted the armies here—three bodies of soldiers, one in blue, and two arrayed against them, one in yellow and one in red—and made his return to Acherre’s company already, if not for the voice.
To the south. The man with a thousand threads of gold.
Mountain’s voice, and where he’d resisted the urge with Erris d’Arrent, he gave in to it now. Thousands of soldiers poured around him, flowing northward into the hills, shouting at each other as they threw down muskets, abandoned supplies, let horses run free through their lines. He felt as though he were watching them from above, a bird flying over his own body. More shouting came from the south, where the ranks of yellow-and red-clad soldiers were only starting to crest the hills in pursuit of their enemies.
The first wave of gunfire snapped his senses back in place.
Kneeling ranks of yellow-clad soldiers had formed midway up the hill he was crossing, letting loose a barrage of musket fire and a billowing cloud of smoke. Howls sounded from the ranks of blue-coated soldiers, no more than fifty paces to his right, where a company had managed to plant itself behind a makeshift wall of rocks and wood, taking up arms where most of the fellows fled.
“What are you doing?” one of the blue-coated soldiers called to him in the Sarresant tongue. “Get down, you bloody fool!”
Go.
The voice fogged his head again for an instant, shattered by another volley exchanged between the lines. A searing pain took him across his back, and he roared.
No. He was here. The spirits called to him, as strongly as he’d ever felt their pull. But he was here, now.
He spun, facing the length of the yellow-clad soldiers’ line. Their soldiers knelt, reloading their weapons, while some men paced along their ranks. Men with golden light behind their eyes, the same effect he’d seen with Erris d’Arrent and her vessels. He saw two of those point to him, as though moved by the same hand, barking orders for their soldiers.
Find him. Kill him.
He ignored the voice’s pull. A dozen muskets trained on him at once, and he called on astahg, vanishing and leaping forward across the field as they fired. His heart pounded as he ran toward their line. Whatever force was summoning him, he had to push it from his mind, at least for now, or he might well die for it.
Mareh’et granted its blessing as he reached the yellow-clad soldiers’ ranks. Instinct said to fight, rather than flee. Three soldiers managed to stand, raising their weapons like spears. He carved through them, a raking strike taking one across the face before he spun to gore the others through their bellies. Shouted warnings rose around him, slower to spread than he could move. He trampled a fourth man, and cut another down, on his way to a woman with stripes on her collar and golden light behind her eyes. She stared at him, shouting something in a foreign tongue as she pointed square at his chest. Mareh’et’s claws severed her hand, then her neck. He shoved the rest of her body forward, throwing her corpse into the next rank of soldiers as he drove forward into their line.
Four identical copies of a man met him as he dashed into the yellow-clad soldiers’ breaking ranks. Fair-skin magic. Only one would be real. Each copy carried a saber in one hand and a pistol in the other, three copies raising the pistol to aim while the fourth rushed toward him with the blade. Mountain gave its blessing, and fire erupted from his hands, engulfing all four copies in a searing blast. He dashed through the resultant smoke, stepping over the single charred corpse left behind, curled and writhing in the mud.
The soldiers broke, a few staring at him, trembling, while the bulk of their ranks collapsed, fleeing back the way they’d come.
His heart thundered a few more beats as he watched them run. Violence hung around him, mangled bodies twisted and broken in the slush, their blood leaking to turn the mud a deep red and put the tang of iron in the air. Farther up the hillside, the company of Sarresant soldiers cheered, reversing one small piece of the broader retreat.
Then, as one, every man and woman in blue flung their weapons down and ran.
It marked an instant reversal in their spirits: One moment they’d been cheering, watching him eviscerate the soldiers advancing toward them up the hill. The next the Sarresant troops were broken, as sure a rout as the terror he’d instilled in their enemies.
He pivoted and saw what had to be the cause. A rider, a woman in a gray cloak, mounted atop a horse at the far western point of the soldiers advancing up the hill, barking commands in a tongue he couldn’t understand. He’d have thought her no more than an officer, albeit one not wearing the other soldiers’ uniform, save for the metallic serpent coiled around her forearm, its scales flashing green and silver in the sun.
Llanara. Not her—Llanara was long dead. But her gift. He knew it. A metallic serpent of the very kind that had decimated his people, leading them to madness and war.
He howled, letting out a warcry loud enough to carry over all the sounds of battle and death, and surrounded himself with a nimbus of lakiri’in as he charged.
Whatever the gray-cloaked woman had done to scatter the Sarresant soldiers, it seemed to have had the opposite effect on hers. Whereas before they’d broken, retreating down the hillside, they regrouped, turning back to him and leveling or reloading their muskets. Some managed shots, miniature thunderclaps echoing through the hills, but none connected as he raced toward the woman and her metallic companion.
She seemed to realize the danger too late, pivoting her horse toward him only a moment before he struck.
White energy flared around her as he channe
led una’re, snapping her horse’s spine with the force of his attack, sending the beast down, rolling over top of its rider as they careened into the mud. The woman pulled herself from the tangle of horseflesh with impossible agility, springing to her feet, turning, and racing away faster than any woman without the guardian’s gift should have been able to move. She bolted from the field with long strides, her gray cloak whipping behind her, and never looked back, even as ipek’a gave its blessing, surrounding him with a nimbus of feather and claw. He leapt, and fell faster than she could run, crashing into her hard enough to send her head into the ground with a wet smack.
He picked himself up, standing over the ruin of her body, where ipek’a’s scything claw had torn a deep gash down her left shoulder and rib cage. The woman was lifeless, lying still, but the serpent had uncoiled itself, staring up at him with fiery gemstones for eyes.
Impossible, the thing thought to him. He heard the sensation of words, though the thing’s mouth made no move to form them, just as he had seen with Reyne d’Agarre’s pet, so long ago. We were promised greatness, so long as we complied.
He said nothing in reply. Regret might well come later; for now there was only blood rushing in his veins. He turned back and saw that whatever magic she’d woven over the soldiers was broken. The company of Sarresant soldiers had rallied again, flocking to their battle standard as their enemies in yellow renewed their uncertainty. A vile thing, to play with men’s and women’s emotions. A forbidden thing; even without the spirits to confirm it, he knew the rightness of it, watching normalcy assert itself in the wake of his violence. Ipek’a’s gift already hummed, waiting at the edge of his consciousness, offering its use if he needed it again. The spirits approved. He could settle the rest when it was done.
Elsewhere on the hillsides the Sarresant soldiers continued their rout, though there were pockets of riders moving among them, clashing with their enemies in isolated displays of resistance. There must have been more like the gray-cloaked woman, serpent-mages riding with Sarresant’s enemies. Part of him wanted to join the few who stood against that evil, latecomers on horseback, with purple armbands and fair-skin magic, who must have been kept in reserve to turn the tide of battle. But this was Erris d’Arrent’s fight, for all he’d reversed one small piece of the field. His path lay deeper in the mountains, where the voice had dulled itself to an aching, longing sensation, pulling him firmly westward.
He almost turned to go, when another rider caught his eye.
An ungainly shape, thundering toward him too directly to be coincidence. By now the space between the routing Sarresant soldiers and their advancing enemies was littered with bodies and abandoned supplies; the new rider wove through them, heeling their mount in a frenzy, riding toward him in as straight a line as the conditions would allow.
He turned back, feeling the full use of the spirits’ gifts available to him. Lakiri’in required time. The rest were ready.
The rider had covered all but the final hundred paces before he recognized who it was.
“Ka’Inari,” he said as the rider slowed.
“Arak’Jur,” Ka’Inari said, the shaman almost as winded as his mount.
“Why did you come?” he asked. “You rode through the battle, and left Acherre?”
“I saw what drew you here,” Ka’Inari said between breaths. “A man, marked by Mountain. A man at the center of a web of golden threads. You mean to find him, and I intend to be at your side.”
“You could have been killed!” he said.
“Yes,” Ka’Inari said.
Tension hung between them, until he relented, the heat in his blood melting at the sight of Ka’Inari, disheveled and ragged, when he had expected almost anything else.
“Keep pace, then,” he said. “We have mountains to climb, and a hard path, before we’re through.”
71
ERRIS
Field Command
Coastal Bluffs, Old Sarresant
She stared, tracing the contours of the map in silence. A small handful of advisors looked on, and thank the Gods they knew better than to speak. Brigade-General Vassail and Field-Marshal Royens flanked her, studying the marks she’d made, signifying the likeliest lines of retreat for the Dauphin’s forces through the Capallains.
“Marquand has done all he can,” she said. “I’m ordering him to withdraw. We’ll need his binders to reinforce the main body of the Third Corps at Orstead.”
“Are you certain, Your Majesty?” Vassail asked. “From the sound of your reports, he’s held the left flank. Another hour might mean five thousand more able to withdraw.”
“Another hour and the enemy might realize what they’re up against.”
“Is there no means for us to gauge their strength?” Royens asked. “Fifty binders ought to be able to hold here”—he pointed to a gap between two steep hills—“provided we can guide the Dauphin’s soldiers to allow the choke to cover their retreat.”
She shook her head. “It’s too great a risk to keep Marquand in the field. If the enemy realizes we’ve committed so many binders, they’ll respond in kind. We need better scouting reports before I’m willing to make that kind of gamble.”
Vassail looked pained, but nodded, remaining silent. Royens rubbed the stubble on his chin, looking less convinced, but just as quiet, letting her order stand unchallenged.
“Very well, then,” she said. “I’ll make the connection.”
She gave a last look at the maps. Yellow bars had been placed to signify the strength of the Thellan advance, arrayed in haphazard lines spread through the hills. Such an uncoordinated attack should never have worked. Gods send the eastern lines were less of a disaster than those in the south.
“These reports must be faulty,” Marquis-General Holliard was saying, from the opposite side of the table. “This is General Renard’s division. He would never break so easily, facing down Thellan cowards and Gand peasants.”
Ordinarily she’d have chastised such a remark—denying reality for the sake of ego was among the deadliest pitfalls of command—but there was something damned odd about this southern rout. She needed to know what had broken their line. Time for it after her orders were given. A deep breath and she found Need within herself. A wellspring, now, where once it had been a tepid, cautious reserve, and the well seemed to grow deeper by the day. Already she had enough to bring herself to the brink, and let her body handle the strain.
Chilled air greeted her as Need shifted her senses into the highlands, far to the south, with the sting of powder and iron in her nose and a throbbing pain in her vessel’s shoulder.
“Wait for them,” Marquand was shouting. “Hold. Hold!”
A wall of Shelter stood between her and sight of the field, blocking off the walls of a valley situated between two hills. Twenty of Marquand’s binders stood in a loosely spaced line, a single rank against the Nameless knew what awaited them on the opposite side of their shield. Most were dismounted, though some rode, each one facing the Shelter with death in their eyes.
“Now!” Marquand cried.
The Shelter vanished, and thunder and smoke roared from the other side, while sheets of fire leapt from Marquand’s hands and those of a dozen more along his line. Another stabbing pain took her vessel in the leg as the white smoke from the enemy’s guns swept back into their lines, pushed by a tide of Entropy. Men and women screamed by the hundreds, lost in a mix of black and white smoke.
“Raise Shelter!” Marquand shouted, and the barrier resumed, blocking off the sight of their enemies, though the sounds—of howling, screaming, pleading—and the smells of powder and charred flesh remained in the air.
“Report, Colonel,” she shouted over the din. Her vessel’s voice broke from the pain. Fresh musket shot through the leg, to go with what had to be another wound beneath her right shoulder. Someone else’s pain. Someone else’s concern.
“D’Arrent!” Marquand shouted back. “Or, Your Majesty, or, fuck me. We’re engaged, sir. I don’t hav
e time to make a bloody report.”
“Marquand!” she snapped. “Your orders are to gather as many of your binders as you can and withdraw from the field.”
The thunder of artillery booming nearby triggered her reflex to duck, and Marquand joined her in the dirt, slamming into the ground as canister shot exploded overhead. She blinked, searching for Shelter, forgetting it was worthless so long as she was tethered to a vessel through Need. Another of Marquand’s binders covered them, throwing a shield overhead in time for the metal shards to vaporize into wisps of smoke.
“Marquand,” she said again. “Do you understand your orders, Colonel?”
“Fuck those orders,” he said. “I have two of our divisions retreating behind me, and bloody good ground at my back. I can hold here for hours. If I leave now, they’re fucked. This rout isn’t natural. Without my people, they can’t—”
“Marquand, you fucking bastard, you listen to me. You are to obey your—”
A wave of musket shot went off, peppering the first Shelter shield hard enough to rip it open with a sound like sucking wind.
“Reinforce it!” Marquand shouted.
“Colonel, sir, the reserve is going dry,” one of the binders called back. “We have to attack, now!”
“High Commander, or, Your Majesty, sir. Like I said, this rout isn’t natural. We can’t leave.”
“Colonel,” she said. “We discuss the tactical situation later. For now I expect you to do your duty. Prove to me I wasn’t wrong to promote you.”
Marquand winced as though she’d shot him in the belly.
“Retreat,” he called to his line. “Use all available Shelter to hold the barrier, and fall back to Lord Tigai.”
“Good,” she said. “Fine work here, Colonel.”
“Fuck you, d’Arrent.”
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