“Land’s thick with woodies,” Gared said. “Hundreds of ’em. The cuttin’ drew ’em like flies to a dungpile. Oughta gather the town and wipe ’em out ’fore we build.”
Leesha looked at Gared closely. The giant Cutter was always recommending battle, as the notched and dented gauntlets at his belt showed. But Leesha was never certain if it was for love of carnage and the jolt of magic that he acted, or for the good of the town.
“He’s right” Rojer added when Leesha remained silent. “The demons will be pushed to its edges when the ward activates, making them thicker still, ready to kill anyone who stumbles off the forbidding. We should just annihilate them in the open rather than try to hunt them through the trees later.”
“S’what the Painted Man’d do,” Gared said.
“The Painted Man would do half the killing himself,” Leesha said, “but he’s not here.”
Gared nodded. “That’s why we need yur help. Gonna need thundersticks and liquid demonfire. Lots of it.”
“I see,” Leesha said.
“Know yur busy,” Gared said. “Got folk to do the mixing, if yu’ll give ’em the recipe.”
“You want me to give you the secrets of fire?” Leesha barked a laugh. “I would sooner let the knowledge pass from the world!”
“What’s the difference ’tween that and my warded axe?” Gared asked. “Yu’ll trust folk with one and not the other?”
“The difference is that your axe doesn’t explode and destroy everything within fifty feet if you drop it or leave it out in the sun,” Leesha said. “My own apprentices will be lucky if I teach them the secrets of fire one day.”
“So we should build the refugee town on demon-infested land?” Gared asked.
“It’s going to be an extension of the Hollow, not a refugee town,” Leesha corrected, “and of course not. Draw up a plan, and if it’s sound, I’ll make what’s needed. But,” she added, “I’ll be on hand to make sure no wood-brained idiot sets himself or the ripping woods on fire.”
Gared shook his head. “Ent safe. Need you at the hospit, case anyone’s hurt.”
Leesha folded her arms. “Then you’ll be fighting without the flamework.”
Wonda crossed her arms as well. “Ent no demon going to lay a claw on Mistress Leesha while I’m around, Gared Cutter, and I don’t mean to wait at the hospit, either.”
“we’ll scour in a week,” Leesha said. “Plenty of time to prepare the land and mix the chemics. Let Benn know, as well. Might as well let the demons charge some glass before we show them the sun.”
Neither Gared nor Rojer seemed pleased, but Leesha knew they had no choice but to nod and agree. Perhaps not as subtle as Duchess Araine, who would have had the men convinced it was their own idea to have her at the scene, but not bad. She wondered if Bruna had secretly been the same, ruling the Hollow from her tiny hut without anyone even realizing.
They galloped across the land on black desert chargers, fifty warriors following Jardir and Ashan on their white stallions. Trailing behind but keeping them in sight, if barely, came Abban on his long-legged camel. They were forced to stop several times to allow him to catch up, usually by a stream where they could water the horses. Such things were almost commonplace in the green lands, something that never ceased to amaze the desert warriors.
“Everam’s beard, these roads are stony,” Abban whined when he finally reached one stream. He practically fell from his seat and groaned as he rubbed at his prodigious backside.
“I do not see why we needed to bring the khaffit, Deliverer,” Ashan said.
“Because I want someone other than you and I who can count past his toes,” Jardir said. “Abban sees things that other men do not, and I need to see all in the green lands if I am to make best use of them in Sharak Ka.”
Abban continued to complain at every bump in the road or chill breeze, but Jardir found it easy to ignore the endless tirade as they rode on. He felt freer than he had in a decade, like an incredible weight had been taken from his shoulders. For however long this expedition took, weeks perhaps, he was responsible for nothing except Abban, Ashan, and the fifty hardened dal’Sharum at his back. Part of him wanted to keep on riding forever, away from the politics of chin, Damaji, and dama’ting.
They encountered some greenland refugees on the road, but these fled their path, and Jardir saw no gain in pursuing them. On foot and afraid to travel at night, there was little danger of them getting ahead and warning the Hollow, and none of them would dare attack the Spears of the Deliverer. Even the corelings at night shied from their path, for Jardir did not call halt when the sun set. Abban somehow managed to keep up in the night, though. He put his camel right in the center of the warriors, tolerating their jeers and spittle for the succor they offered.
It was on such a night that they came upon the Hollow. Shouts echoed down the road, along with sounds like thunder and great flashes of light.
They slowed their pace, and Jardir turned into the trees to follow the cacophony, his warriors following. Eventually, they came to the edge of a great swath of cleared land filled with the stumps of trees, where the chin fought their Northern alagai’sharak.
Great fires blazed in trenches, and coupled with the constant flare of wards throughout the battlefield, the clearing was lit as if it were daylight and littered with dead alagai. The fires and wards funneled demons into places where the Northerners stood ready to cut them to pieces.
“They’ve prepared their battlefield,” Jardir mused.
Abban looked around, finding a suitable space, and staked his camel, removing a portable warding circle from its saddlebags, which he began to set up around them both.
“Even among so many warriors, you must hide behind wards like a coward?” Jardir asked him.
Abban shrugged. “I am khaffit,” he said simply. Jardir snorted and turned back to watch the Northerners fight.
Unlike the chin from Everam’s Bounty, these Northerners were tall and heavily muscled. The largest of them fought not with spear and shield but with great warded axes and mattocks. The men were of a size with the wood demons, and chopped at them like trees.
The Northerners fought well, but there were hundreds of wood demons coming at them. It seemed the chin would be overwhelmed when they broke apart, clearing ground for a line of archers to scour the field.
Jardir gaped to see the archers were clad in the long dresses the Northern women favored, displaying their faces and half their breasts like harlots.
“Their women join in alagai’sharak?” Ashan asked in shock. Jardir looked closer at the battlefield and saw that even some of those fighting in close quarters were female.
And there was a great giant, even among these tall people, who led every charge with a bellow that resonated for miles. He swung a great two-headed axe in one hand like a hatchet, and in the other he swung a machete as if it were a pocketknife.
One of the Northerners went down on one knee at the blow of an eightfoot-tall wood demon, and the giant tackled it away before it could land a killing blow. He lost his weapons in the tumble, but it made no difference as the alagai leapt at him. With one hand, the giant stopped the demon short, grabbing it, and with the other he landed a blow that flared with magic and sent the alagai reeling. Jardir saw he wore heavy gloves banded with warded metal.
The giant gave the wood demon no time to recover, falling on it and pummeling it about the head until he was covered in ichor and the demon lay still. He roared into the night, and with his thick mane of yellow hair and beard, he looked like nothing if not a lion atop its kill.
Another demon approached, but a slender boy with bright red hair and pale skin, dressed like a khaffit in a patchwork of bright color, stood before it and put up an instrument of some sort. He made a jarring sound, and the alagai grasped its head and shrieked in agony. The noise continued, and the demon fled as if in terror, right into another chin’s waiting axe.
“Everam’s beard,” Abban breathed.
�
�What magic does that one carry?” Ashan asked.
“We must find out,” Jardir agreed.
“Allow me to kill the giant and bring the boy to you, Deliverer,” Hasik begged, his eyes taking on the mad light they always did before battle.
“Do nothing,” Jardir said. “We are here to learn, not fight.” He could tell his warriors did not like that answer, but he did not care, because two other figures had caught his eye. One was clearly a woman, carrying no weapon, only a small basket. The other was much larger, and dressed like a man, but carried a bow like the northern women. Her face was demon-scarred.
Both were clad in fine cloaks embroidered with hundreds of wards, and they wandered through the carnage unmolested by alagai and given a respectful berth by the other Northerners.
“They are unseen to the alagai as if they wear the Cloak of Kaji,” Ashan said.
A demon clawed through the chest of a man, and he cried out and went down, dropping his axe. The cloaked women hurried to the man, the taller one putting an arrow in the demon as the slender one knelt by the man’s side. She pulled back her hood, and Jardir saw her face.
She was even more beautiful than Inevera, her skin white like cream, a sharp contrast with her hair, black like the armor of a rock demon.
The woman tore the man’s shirt, tending his wound while her female bodyguard stood watch over her, shooting any alagai that dared draw close.
“Some sort of Northern dama’ting?” Jardir mused aloud.
“A heathen parody of one, perhaps,” Ashan said.
After a moment, the beautiful woman gave a command to her bodyguard, who slung her bow across her shoulders and lifted the wounded man in her arms. The way back out was blocked by a group of alagai, but the Northern dama’ting reached into her pouch and removed an object. Fire appeared in her hand, setting spark to it, and she drew back her arm and threw. An explosion blasted the alagai from her path, leaving them littering the ground, unmoving.
“Heathen, perhaps,” Jardir said, “but these Northerners are not without power.”
“The men must be cowards worse than khaffit, to depend on women for their rescue,” Shanjat said. “I would rather die on the field.”
“No,” Jardir said, “the cowards are us, hiding here in the shadows while chin fight alagai’sharak.”
“They are our enemies,” Ashan said.
Jardir looked at him and shook his head. “Perhaps by day, but all men are brothers in the night.” He put up his night veil and lifted his spear, giving a war cry as he charged into the fight.
There was a surprised hesitation in his men, and then they, too, roared and followed.
“Krasians!” Merrem the butcher’s wife screamed, and Rojer looked up in surprise, seeing that she was right. Dozens of black-clad Krasian warriors were charging into the clearing, brandishing spears and whooping. His blood went cold, and the bow slipped from his fiddle.
A demon almost killed him in that moment, but Gared cut the arm that swiped at him clean off with his machete.
“Eyes on the demons!” Gared bellowed for all the Cutters to hear. “Krasians ent gonna get a fight if we let the corelings do their work for ’em!”
But it quickly became apparent that the Krasians had no intention of attacking the Hollowers. Led by a man with a white turban and a warded spear that looked as if it was made entirely of polished silver, they fell upon the wood demons like a pack of wolves breaking into a chicken coop, killing with practiced efficiency.
The leader waded out alone into clusters of wood demons, but his fearlessness seemed justified, for he laid waste to them as easily as the Painted Man could have, his spear a blur and his limbs moving inhumanly fast.
The other warriors linked shields in fighting wedges, mowing demons like summer barley. One group was led by a man in a pristine white robe, a stark contrast with the black-clad warriors. The man in white held no weapons, but he strode through the battlefield confidently. A wood demon leapt at him and he stepped to the side, tripping it and shoving as it passed him by, driving it onto the spear of one of his warriors.
Another demon attacked him, but the man in white swung his torso left, then right, his feet never moving as he smoothly dodged the demon’s clawed swipes. On its third swing, he caught its wrist and twisted, turning its own attack against it and flipping it over onto its back where a warrior casually skewered it.
Rojer and the others had assumed the scouring would take all night, and planned for reserves of fighters to be brought in as needed and much of Leesha’s flamework used.
With the Krasians fighting, the battle was over in minutes.
Krasian and greenlander alike stood frozen when the last demon fell, staring at one another in shock. All continued to clutch their weapons, as if unsure the time for battle was past, but none dared make the first move, waiting for word from their leaders.
“The chin watch us with one eye,” Jardir said to Ashan.
Ashan nodded. “The other eye looks to the giant and the red-haired khaffit boy who made the alagai run in terror.”
“They stand as frozen as the others,” Jardir noted.
“Not the true leaders, then,” Ashan guessed. “Kai’Sharum, or the heathen equivalent. The giant might even be their Sharum Ka.”
“Men still worthy of respect, then,” Jardir said. “Come.”
He strode over to the two, slipping his spear into his shoulder harness and showing his hands to indicate he meant no harm. When he stood before the men, he dipped a polite bow.
“I am Ahmann, son of Hoshkamin, of the line of Jardir, son of Kaji,” he said in perfect Thesan, seeing the men’s eyes flare in recognition. “This is Damaji Ashan.” He gestured to Ashan, who imitated his shallow bow.
“Honored,” Ashan said.
The two greenlanders looked at each other curiously. Finally, the red-haired boy shrugged, and the giant relaxed. Jardir realized with surprise that the boy was dominant.
“Rojer, son of Jessum, of the Inns of Riverbridge,” the red-haired boy said, sweeping back his multicolored cloak. He set one leg forward and the other back, lowering himself in some sort of greenland bow.
“Gared Cutter,” the giant said. “Er…son of Steave.” He was even less civilized, stepping forward and sticking out his hand so quickly Jardir almost caught his wrist and broke his arm. It was only at the last moment that he realized the giant merely wanted to clasp hands in greeting. He squeezed hard, perhaps in some primitive test of manhood, and Jardir returned the pressure until both men felt their bones grinding together. The giant gave him an extra nod of respect when they finally broke apart.
“Shar’Dama Ka, more chin approach,” Ashan said in Krasian. “One of their heretic clerics and the heathen healer.”
“I’ve no wish to antagonize these people, Ashan,” Jardir said. “Heathens or no, we will respect them as if they were dama and dama’ting.”
“Shall I wash the feet of their khaffit, as well?” Ashan asked, disgusted.
“If I command it,” Jardir replied, bowing deeply to the new arrivals. The red-haired boy stepped in smoothly to facilitate introductions. Jardir met the Holy Man, bowed, and forgot his name instantly, turning to the woman.
“Mistress Leesha Paper,” Rojer introduced, “Herb Gatherer of Deliverer’s Hollow.” Leesha spread her skirts and dipped low, and Jardir found himself unable to take his eyes from her displayed cleavage until she rose. She looked him boldly in the eyes, and he was shocked to find hers were blue like the sky.
On impulse, Jardir took her hand and kissed it. He knew it was bold, especially among strangers, but Everam favored the bold, it was said. Leesha gasped at the move, and her pale cheeks reddened slightly. If it was possible, she became even more beautiful in that moment.
“Thank you for your assistance,” Leesha said, nodding her head at the hundreds of alagai corpses in the clearing.
“All men are as brothers in the night,” Jardir said, bowing. “We stand united.”
Lee
sha nodded. “And during the day?”
“It seems the Northern women do more than just fight,” Ashan murmured in Krasian.
Jardir smiled. “I believe all people should stand united in the day, as well.”
Leesha’s eyes narrowed. “United under you?”
Jardir felt Ashan and the greenland men tense. It was as if no one else on the scene mattered. Only they two would determine if the black demon ichor on the field of battle would soon be covered with red human blood.
But Jardir had no fear of that, feeling as if this meeting was destined long ago. He spread his hands helplessly. “If it is Everam’s will, perhaps someday.” He bowed again.
The corner of Leesha’s mouth quirked in a smile. “You’re honest, at least. Perhaps it’s best, then, that the night is young. Will you and your councilors share tea with us?”
“We would be honored,” Jardir said. “May my warriors pitch horses and tents in this clearing while they wait?”
“At the far end,” Leesha said. “We have work yet to do on this side.”
Jardir looked at her curiously, and then noted the greenlanders who had come out after the battle was complete. These were smaller, weaker men than the axe-wielding warriors, and they began gathering glittering objects off the battlefield.
“What are they about?” he asked, more to hear her voice again than because he actually cared what the Northern khaffit were doing.
Leesha looked to the side, then bent to retrieve a stoppered glass bottle, which she handed to Jardir. It was an elegant blow of glass, beautiful in its simplicity.
“Smash it with the butt of your spear,” she said.
Jardir’s brow furrowed at that, not understanding the significance of destroying something so beautiful. Perhaps it was some sort of friendship ritual. He pulled free the Spear of Kaji and complied with her request, but the butt of the spear ricocheted off the bottle with a clang, leaving the glass intact.
“Everam’s beard,” Jardir murmured. He tried repeatedly to smash the bottle, but failed every time. “Incredible.”
The Desert Spear (demon) Page 52
