WoP - 02 - Istu Awakened

by Robert E. Vardeman

  As rapid as Imperial response had been, it had not come quickly enough to prevent the Vridzish from pouring across the Marchant and laying waste to half the Black March. Like locusts the Zr'gsz devoured everything edible in their path, including human inhabitants who didn't flee in time. Unlike locusts, what they couldn't consume they put to the torch.

  A hundred spires of smoke reared up into the blue sky beyond the black ant-mass of the Zr'gsz armies. For the hundredth time since the sun came up, Fost tried to estimate how many there were. For the hundredth time, he gave up when the numbers became too hopelessly huge.

  'Why did Zak'zar tell us about the Children of Expectation?' Fost asked, pulling up a clump of black-tipped grass and thumping the sod around its base listlessly against his thigh.

  'To seize psychological advantage,' said the short, round, bald man in the white robe. Oracle tuned himself to Moriana's mind and succeeded in projecting his image several hundred miles from High Medurim as a result. 'We already know the Hissers had greater numbers than expected. By letting us know where they came from, Zak'zar also gave us reason to fear there'd be so many we couldn't possibly win.'

  Fost plucked out a blade of grass and chewed on it.

  'Yes, if they've been stashing away the rising generation for thousands of years . . .' He let the sentence trail off. It was too depressing to finish.

  'Well, Fost my boy,' Erimenes said avuncularly, 'see how you've come up in the world under my tutelage? You're now a bona-fide hero, and Marshal of the Empire as well, with a fine suit of armor and a strapping black and white war dog.'

  'Marshal of the Empire, indeed.' He spat out the grass. 'Being Marshal doesn't mean those highborn fools listen to me, much less take my orders.'

  'But Foedan of Kolnith and the Border Guards heed your counsel,' Ziore said. She favored Erimenes with a wink of surprising lewdness.

  'That's all well and good,' replied Fost. 'The high and mighty chivalry of High Medurim and the knights of the other City States all think

  Foedan's a traitor to his class. And the Border Guards and militias of the various Marches - never mind theirexperience - are considered nothing more than low born dabblers in the fine art of war.' He pointed with an armored arm.

  'Behold the main strength of the Medurimin army. Fifteen thousand spearmen, every one of whom is a conscript wanting nothing more than to be somewhere else. Then there are eight thousand regulars of the Imperial Army, who look sharp in drill and who have never seen blood shed outside a barroom brawl. Then the infantry. On both wings are men who will win the day for humanity, if you care to listen to their boasts. Six thousand knights from Medurim and the City States, all of whom can be relied on to do the worst thing possible in any given circumstance. Sandwiched between are the only troops likely to do a damned bit of good, longbowmen from Samazant and Thrishnor, and there're only a scant four thousand of them.-

  'But what of the Borderers and the militiamen you think so highly of?' asked Ziore.

  In disgust, Fost waved at men drawn up well to the rear of the front ranks.

  'Back there where they can't get in the way of the precious cavalry.'

  Oracle rubbed his plump chin with fingertips. It was a mannerism he'd picked up from Fost, which unnerved the courier every time he saw it.

  'Is not the reserve a good place for them?' the projection asked. Fost swallowed hard. The sunlight contrived to shine through Oracle's body.

  'It may turn out that way,' Fost answered, 'if the battle isn't lost before they can come to grips with the Hissers.'

  Moriana walked over and laid tender hands on his shoulders. He couldn't actually feel her hands, since his body was encased in a lobster carapace of metal, but he still appreciated the gesture. He reached up and clasped her hand to his.

  'At least you're near me, love,' she said quietly.

  Fost's joy at hearing those words was short-lived. The two genies had heard the words, too, and triggered off a now-common response.

  'Yes, my own true love,' Erimenes said in a disgustingly honeyed voice. 'And I shall be here, not far from your side!'

  Ziore batted nonexistent lashes and said, 'Never leave me again! Oh, swear you won't, my blue darling.'

  'Never, so long as we both shall live, sweetums.'

  'Sweetums?' Fost and Moriana cried in unison. They shared a groan. It had been like this ever since the night in the Golden Dome. Neither ghost was a stranger to lust, but with the discovery that they could at long last do something about that particular passion, they had fallen in love - sticky, sweet, gooey love - and had become hopelessly mired in emotion. They lapsed now entirely into unintelligible baby talk.

  'Do you know,' Fost declared, 'I liked you both better when you fought all the time?'

  'How could you take that seriously, Fost?' Erimenes shook his head in pity for his friend's ignorance. 'That was but gentle teasing. From the first sweet moment we met, we both knew that it was love.'

  'Isn't he poetic?' Ziore sighed to no one in particular. 'No.' Fost rose and pulled on his gauntlets. Moriana pointed to a dark form high above. 'Ch'rri's signalling,' she said. 'The Zr'gsz skyrafts have taken to the air.

  Fost shuddered, remembering Ch'rri and her lover, her dead, dismembered lover.

  'At least the damned City's not with them. Nor the Demon.' Where City and Demon were, they didn't know. Moriana was blocked from directly scrying her lost Sky City, but her perceptions did tell her that it and its resident demon floated somewhere to the southeast. It was little enough that they wouldn't have to match strength with Istu.

  Yet.

  'I'd best mount up,' Fost said, eyeing his war dog. He was not happy about riding into battle on the back of a dog. He managed to stay aboard one - and that was about all. But the fact remained no one in the Imperial Army took orders from any unmounted commander. Even the border men were peculiar that way.

  After banging his head against the wall of noble obduracy and class pride, Fost had resigned himself from any direct role in the conduct of the battle. He knew he lacked the experience to be a field officer commanding vast armies of men, yet his choice still nagged him because few of the Imperial nobles and swaggering regular army officers had more experience than he. Fost had settled for command over Moriana's own guard, a unit of volunteers. To Moriana's surprise, the men from the Marches had joined her personal unit in large numbers, some of the veterans from the fiasco at Chanobit Creek. And even a hundred lancers from Harmis, domain of her lost lover and champion Darl Rhadaman, had joined the unit.

  Moriana's unit had a vital role to play. They were to ensure that Moriana could work her magics in safety during battle. They were to keep out of the thick of fighting off on the left flank. That was fine with Fost. He had little taste for battle. Personal combat, yes, man to man, face to face. He savored that, sometimes. But not the wholesale butchery promised this day. That sickened and scared him.

  A line of skyrafts appeared above the Zr'gsz army and floated silently forward. Fost swung into his saddle and waited.

  Responding listlessly to the insistent notes of their officers' whistles and the lead-tipped cudgels of their sergeants, the conscript spearmen shuffled forward. The Zr'gsz moved toward them in a wedge, black massed ranks of low caste spearmen and slingers in the center. Higher caste Hissers rode giant lurching lizards on the trailing flanks. The wind shifted and brought a rank reptilian smell wafting across the Imperial lines. Dogs began an excited barking.

  The first wave of skyrafts swooped toward the Medurimin ranks. Arrows sleeted down. Screams of agony and shocked surprise rose, spectrally thin at this distance. Moriana bit her lip. Her biggest concern was choosing the precise moment to use her magic. She had only so much strength and she had to marshal it against the moment of crisis, of greatest tactical need. She looked left and right along the bluffs, checking the preparations she'd made. All seemed in order, but the time for magic wasn't yet.

  'It's hard to let those men die,' said Ziore quietly.

&n
bsp; 'My only consolation is knowing they trade their lives so future generations of humanity will be free of the Hissers. And Istu.'

  Trying to psych his mount into believing he was both calm and in command, Fost looked to Oracle and asked, 'How're you doing?'

  'Well, I think. Magister Banshau himself is overseeing the balance of nutrients in my pool.' There was a spot of light against the darkness - or Dark, as Fost thought with a thrill of horror. Despite the Hisser spear in his belly, Banshau lived and would recover. There are worse armors than several inches of flab.

  The skyrafts rained down a continuous storm of arrows on the Imperial foot soldiers. Already, the ill-dressed lines began to waver, though the Medurimin had not yet come to grips with the foe.

  'Poor bastards,' Fost said with feeling.

  Moriana's fingers itched with the need to hurl spells, to smash the Hissers who fought from the smug safety of their skystone rafts. But she knew she had to conserve her strength.

  The borderland archers had opened on the flitting rafts. The Zr'gsz craft were slower and less maneuverable than Sky City eagles. Many shafts found their marks. Small, twisting shapes began to fall among the ranks of spearmen.

  Deep thrums punctuated by tocking sounds announced that the Imperial catapults had joined battle. A big skyraft suddenly slewed in air, spilling dozens of occupants to their deaths. The shot had probably been loosed by one of the crews of refugee Estil artillerists Fost had bribed away from Ortil Onsulomulo. They were superlative with their missile engines, though the Imperial crews were far from poor.

  The lines of foot soldiers met. A clash of arms and clamor of voices went up. Fost thought it impressive, but Moriana found it almost anticlimactic. It was wholly unlike the rending clash with which her knights and Grassland allies had met at Chanobit.

  Almost at once, the Imperial infantry began to be pushed back. Moriana's muscles started winding themselves into knots.

  'Commit your cavalry, damn you!' she shouted at the enemy commander.

  But the Zr'gsz general, whoever he was - Zak'zar? - was much too canny. He knew that to approach the Imperial cavalry too closely with his own mounted troops would trigger a charge. Haughtily disdainful of their border reserves, the knights would never think of charging in support of their own infantry. So the Vridzish held his mounted men back as long as possible, his infantry chopping up the footsoldiers unmolested by the knights.

  'I see it,' Oracle murmured. 'If the Zr'gsz cavalry were not closing on the flanks, the knights would charge the foot soldiers. The lizard riders are bait of a sort, aren't they?'

  'Of a negative sort, yes,' Fost said sourly. 'Shrewd of you to see it.' His mouth twisted. 'Shrewd of that damned serpent to think of it.'

  It began as a tiny ripple along the line of conscript spearmen.

  Men in the front rank turned in fear from the flashing stone-edged weapons of the Hissers. Poorly armored, they still had the advantage over the Zr'gsz, who wore none at all. But it would take men much better motivated to face the inhuman speed and ferocity of the Zr'gsz. The first rank turned and shoved back in panic on the men behind, who resisted and then sought flight themselves. In moments, the whole formation was beginning to erode like a dirt clod dropped into a fast-running stream.

  A squadron of Imperial cavalry surged forward on the far right flank. Fost saw a black chalice on a white pennon at the fore and smiled grimly. Foedan led his Kolnith knights into Zr'gsz lines, knowing his fellows would have to cover him against a countercharge of Hisser cavalry. No sooner had the Kolnithin driven deep into the body of the Vridzish foot soldiers than the Imperial knights and the Zr'gsz lizard riders charged one another.

  Moriana had seen the giant lizards the Hissers rode before, sprawling green monsters with a crest of long yellow spines running down their backs. Not even she had seen them in full charge. Awesome as the full charge of the Northern heavy cavalry was, the lizards' charge was even more awesome. The whip-tailed monsters raised their bloated bodies off the ground and sprinted with legs at full extension. Six thousand dog riders met fewer than half as many Zr'gsz, but the Hissers' lizard mounts gave them the edge in height and speed. At first contact, the Imperial squadrons on the right flank reeled and fell in confusion, while on the left the Hissers were brought to a halt. As the resounding surf-boom of the collision died, the battle degenerated into swirling melee, Zr'gsz and humans hacking one another with axe, mace and sword. Triangular lizard heads darted to snap knights from their mounts and crush them in sawtoothed jaws; dogs grabbed wattled throats of the dragons and clung, tearing out huge gobbets of flesh.

  'Strike!' Moriana commanded, raising her arm. For hundreds of yards along the buffs, pageboys struck padded hammers against brass gongs. The Imperial treasurer winced at the expense of gongs and ridiculed them as an extravagance. But Moriana had got her way; the gongs were the most lethal weapon.

  The reverberation of hundreds of gongs filled the air, dampening even the mad tumult of battle. Moriana closed her eyes and concentrated all her energy, her being, her very soul, on modulating the booming waves of sound.

  With Ziore to help draw the memory from the depths of her mind, and Oracle to analyze the memories, Moriana had been able to determine the exact pitch which the undying toad creature Ullapag had used to induce torpor and death in Zr'gsz venturing too close to the skystone mines of Omizantrim. Now she altered the voice of the gongs until they cried out in the inaudible voice of the Ullapag.

  Skyrafts began skidding crazily all over the sky, scattering their passengers like a farmer scatters handfuls of seeds. The relentless advance of the Vridzish foot soldiers in the center and the lizard riders on the right stopped as if it had run into a wall. The riding dragons uttered hissing squeals of fear and fled, their senseless riders dropping from the saddles.

  The rout of the Imperial center was stemmed. Even the ranks of the regulars were being disrupted by the panicking conscripts.

  With the upper hand already, the left wing cavalry squadrons ran the stunned lizard riders off the field. Fost was shouting and pounding in his saddle.

  'You've done it, Moriana! You've won the battle for us!'

  Oracle noticed the black cloud forming above the battlefield.

  'I beg your pardon, Your Highness,' he said to Moriana. Her eyes opened and glared at him. She needed every ounce of her concentration.

  He pointed to the cloud. Her eyes went wide.

  'Get down!' she screamed.

  Fost flung himself face down on the sod. His dog bolted and smashed into a silver dome that hadn't been there seconds before. As he lay blinking, he realized the jagged purple lines of afterimage were caused by lightning. The pewter dome above flickered and went out of existence. He looked at Moriana. Her face was drawn and pale.

  'I don't know if I can do that again,' she said, her voice weak.

  He scanned the line of gongs - or where the line had been. Charred corpses remained behind where humans had once stood. He swallowed hard. Had it not been for Oracle's alertness and the quickness of Moriana's reactions, they would have shared the fate of those feckless pageboys.

  'Why is the cloud going away?' demanded Erimenes. 'It could blast our whole army to rubble.'

  'The Zr'gsz sorcerer - or sorcerers - must spend their life energies to cast spells, just as I must. They couldn't maintain the lightning cloud.' She smoothed hair back from her forehead. 'Its work was done, anyway,' she added bitterly.

  The left wing's pursuit of enemy cavalry ended abruptly in disaster when the deadly vibrations ceased. The Hissers turned back on their pursuers while a living sea of footmen swamped the knights from the side. The dogs began to mill in confusion. Having lost momentum, the heavy riders were doomed. They could work destruction on their foes, but it was only a question of time before the last was dragged from his saddle and slain.

  The center gave way to total flight. The Imperial ranks behind began to fall apart as the supposedly invincible regulars joined in the disorderly retreat. Behi
nd them, the men of the border states waited, grim and firm.

  When Moriana's force dome winked out, Fost's war dog had run down the face of the bluff where it was intercepted by the picket of Black March bowmen guarding the foot of the hill.

  'I'll be back,' Fost promised, and began picking his way down.

  Summoning her resources, Moriana began to fling forth spell after spell. None worked as well as the vibrations; that had been their best chance and she knew it. The Zr'gsz magic met her every spell and cancelled it. She felt the deadly frustration her sister must have felt during the battle for the Sky City, when the Heart of the People harmlessly absorbed her most potent magics. But one thing encouraged her. The Zr'gsz magic was all defensive. No lethal conjurations were loosed against the Imperial armies.

  On the other hand, the Zr'gsz were winning without them.

  'Here, Marshal,' a grinning boy said, handing Fost the reins of his dog. Fost nodded, trying to look gruff and martial.

  'Thanks, son.' He hoised himself into the saddle. The skitterish beast danced and growled.

  The Zr'gsz foot soldiers advanced again, harrying the routed Imperial forces. The Marchers waited tensely, weapons ready, but the Hissers didn't come their way. The green tide swept past their knoll in pursuit of fleeing foes. Fost looked that way and tried not to wince. It seemed the end of the battle wasn't far off.

  His dog turned and caught sight of the enemy. Fost's dog was a finer charger, a mount fit and trained to be ridden by a knight. And like the Imperial knights, it was bred to be headstrong, ferociously brave, and as dumb as a stump.

  The dog charged.

  On the hill Moriana sank down sobbing as her legs gave way. 'It's no use,' she moaned. 'I can't go on!' 'Don't give up,' Ziore gently urged.

  'Don't you understand? Every spell I try they counter before it's completed. It's over. I'm sorry I brought you into this.'

  Hesitantly, Oracle touched her shoulder. She didn't feel it. He couldn't project a tactile illusion this far. He cleared his throat.