Touched by the Gods

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “I have no idea,” Granzer admitted. “Perhaps he really is the divine champion, come at last – but why here, in Seidabar, and not at the head of the army?” He shook his head. “Or it could be some trick the conspirators have devised – perhaps they intend to set up a false champion and then kill him, to dishearten our people, or have him betray the Empire.”

  “What do you intend to do about it?”

  “Find him,” Granzer replied immediately. “Find him, and talk to him. And see if those rioters recognize his voice – he might be one of the men who hired them. This whole thing might have been staged to convince us he's the champion.”

  Sulibai said, “That seems improbably complicated.”

  “Conspiracies often are improbably complicated. It's in their nature.”

  “Is there anything else, your Highness?” Delbur asked.

  Granzer stopped dead in his tracks and stared at his aide.

  “Of course there is, you confounded idiot,” he said. “I want to know everything that happened here! I want everyone who was in this palace at any time in the past two days questioned – even my wife's mother!” Delbur flinched at this mention of the Empress; Granzer ignored it and continued. “I want every Olnamian in the city brought in and questioned. I want the priests to send scholars and magicians to go over every inch of the east wing and tell me exactly how the fire started. In case it hasn't sunk in, we have an enemy here who has just struck at the very heart of the Empire; we need to identify and destroy our foe immediately, no matter what it takes!”

  Then he turned and, with a swirl of his red cloak, marched off.

  “I've never seen him so angry,” Delbur muttered, hanging back from following.

  “No one ever tried to burn down his home before,” Sulibai replied.

  Delbur glanced at the Councillor, then took a deep breath and ran after the Prince.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Onnell stood on a camp-chair at one end of his ordained route and peered eastward across the river at the enemy camp. It seemed very odd that the two camps should be so close together, in plain sight of one another, separated by little more than a couple of hundred yards of brownish water. If the two armies were this close, shouldn't they be fighting?

  It seemed natural that they would fight. All through the training back in Agabdal and the long, boring winter in Drievabor, Onnell and his companions had taken it for granted that once the rebel army was within reach, the two sides would immediately begin fighting, and would fight until one side was destroyed.

  So far, though, they weren't fighting. Oh, each side would occasionally send a flight of arrows across, or a New Magician would try to fly over and spy, only to be sent scurrying back by either archers or the other side's magicians, but in general the two sides were simply watching each other.

  The rebels had arrived and made camp the night before, pitching their tents and digging firepits and so on; Onnell was very glad that the prevailing winds were from the west, because even so the stench of the corpses, the nightwalkers, was ghastly. Only a whiff of it reached the Imperial forces, here on the western banks of the Grebiguata; Onnell thought it must be unbearable to the east.

  The rebel soldiers – the living ones – didn't seem to mind the smell. They must, Onnell thought, have gotten used to it during the long march westward, or during the winter spent holed up in Uinaguem, though the cold had probably helped keep it down.

  The smell had been one nasty surprise when the rebels got close enough. The fact that they had their own New Magicians had been another. The Imperial Army had a dozen – Vrai Burrai himself, and General Balinus' aide Tebas Tudan, and several of Vrai Burrai's students from the Imperial College – but the rebels had at least two, one wielding the same bright magic as Vrai Burrai's group, and the other... well, the other was presumably Rebiri Nazakri, the dreaded evil wizard who was leading the rebellion against the Domdur Empire. Somehow Onnell had not expected to see the Nazakri himself taking part in matters yet, but there he had been, walking along the riverbank in a shimmering, shadowy aura of red fire and black smoke.

  That had been this morning. Then, around mid-morning, everything over there had fallen silent. The nightwalkers lay in neat rows, as still as the corpses they ought to be; the Nazakri had vanished into his pavilion, leaving it to the archers and his other magician to fend off any intruding Imperial magicians. Living sentries patrolled the camp's boundaries, but there was no shouting, no singing, no orders being passed along.

  The Imperial vanguard had simply watched all this, for the most part.

  General Balinus had debated with Lord Duzon and the other six commanders as to whether a messenger should be sent to demand the rebels' surrender; Onnell had overheard part of the discussion as he went about his duties. Some of the colonels had thought that a formal demand for surrender might bring Rebiri Nazakri to his senses, now that he could actually see the Imperial vanguard.

  Balinus had pointed out that other messengers sent to talk terms with the Nazakri had wound up dead. He had challenged his subordinates to name the man they would send to such near-certain doom.

  Colonel Imbigai, commander of the Third Seidabar, had suggested sending a magician, and the others had taken up the idea. In the end Vrai Burrai had sent Vimal, one of his students. Burrai himself, as a claimant to the title of champion, was nominally under the command of Lord Duzon, but at the same time, as Master of the Imperial College of the New Magic he was in charge of all the New Magicians and answered directly to General Balinus; that unclear chain of command had prolonged the debate, since neither Balinus nor Duzon really wanted to send anyone, but at last Vimal had been chosen and sent. She had gotten about halfway through her first sentence, announcing herself, when the enemy's black magic had sent her fleeing back across the Grebiguata.

  That had been shortly before noon. Since then everything had been quiet, and both camps seemed to have already settled into a normal routine despite the proximity of their foes. Onnell had thought that it might have been clever to strike immediately, before the enemy was entirely prepared, but apparently General Balinus preferred to wait and see what happened.

  So far, that had been nothing.

  The sun was down in the west, though, and the sky dimming. The air, which had still borne the lingering chill of early spring, was turning downright cold. Onnell wondered whether the coming of night would make any difference. He shielded his eyes from the light behind him and stared across the river – just in time to see the nightwalkers start to stir.

  He watched long enough to be absolutely sure he wasn't imagining things, then hurried to the lieutenant in charge of the watch – not running, but walking very briskly.

  He saluted, hand to chest, then said, “Sir, the nightwalkers are moving.”

  “Moving how?” the lieutenant demanded, looking up from his papers.

  “Just... moving, sir. They've been lying still all day, but now they're getting up and moving about.”

  “Are they preparing to attack?”

  Onnell hesitated. “Uh... not that I saw, sir.”

  “Nor shall they,” the lieutenant said. “They have no boats, no bridges – what are they going to do, fly across?”

  “Swim, perhaps?”

  “Assuming nightwalkers can swim, soldier – an assumption I wouldn't hasten to make – I think that would make them fine targets for our archers, don't you?”

  “I don't know, sir.”

  “Fine. Go away. You've made your report.” He waved a dismissal.

  Onnell turned and left, vaguely unsatisfied. There was something wrong with the lieutenant's thinking; the rebels wouldn't have come all this way just to be stopped by a river. It wasn't as if they hadn't known the Grebiguata was here. Onnell didn't know how they intended to cross it, but he was sure they had a way. They had deliberately avoided Drievabor, after all.

  He returned to his post and watched uneasily as the nightwalkers rose and gathered in a great crowd around the black wiza
rd's pavilion.

  They didn't seem to be preparing to attack, but they did have weapons – he could see swords and spears. Why would they have weapons if they didn't intend to use them?

  He watched as long as he could, staring into the gathering gloom; then, at last, Bousian came to relieve him.

  “I hate sentry duty,” Bousian said as he slapped Onnell on the shoulder and accepted the ceremonial horn. He slung the horn's leather cord around his own neck, then peered out across the river.

  “The one advantage of the night shift,” Bousian remarked, “is that it's so dark no one will fault me if I miss a few details in my report.”

  “I'd rather you didn't miss anything tonight,” Onnell said uneasily.

  “I can see why,” Bousian said. “What are they doing over there, anyway? Bathing? Do they think it'll keep the stench down?”

  “What?” Onnell whirled and stared into the night.

  “There,” Bousian said, pointing off to the right.

  Onnell looked. He had been concentrating so much on the main group clustered around Rebiri Nazakri's tent that he hadn't even noticed that roughly a hundred yards off to the south of the rebel camp nightwalkers were crawling one by one down the riverbank and into the water. At least, he assumed they were nightwalkers; it was almost impossible to make out details in the darkness. There were simply man-sized shapes moving awkwardly down into the water.

  He didn't see any coming back out of the water.

  “Vevanis and Vedal,” Onnell muttered. He told Bousian, “Keep a good watch!” Then he turned and hurried to find the lieutenant.

  The lieutenant was reluctant to believe that there was any cause for concern, but he did come out of his tent to take a look. “They're going into the water,” he admitted, “but what of it? I don't see any of them swimming across.”

  “They're staying under water!” Onnell insisted.

  “They'd drown,” the lieutenant said derisively.

  “Sir, they're already dead!”

  The lieutenant had to consider that for a moment, trying to find some way to deny Onnell's conclusion; he had just yielded to the inevitable and begun shouting the alarm when the first nightwalkers rose up from the water on the western shore of the river.

  Onnell didn't wait for the lieutenant to give orders; he drew his sword and ran to confront the foe.

  The Imperial camp had three sentries posted on each side; the three from the southern boundary and the one from the southern end of the riverfront had confronted the foe, and were now gathered into a tight little knot, back to back, swords flailing. A dozen nightwalkers surrounded them, their wet clothes and weapons glittering strangely in the light of the watchfires behind them and the twoscore moons overhead.

  “Aim for their necks!” someone shouted. “General Balinus says they die if you cut off their heads!”

  “That's easier said than done,” Onnell muttered to himself as he ran.

  The commotion was spreading; heads were being thrust out through tent-flaps, and soldiers were emerging, some of them still buckling belts or pulling on boots.

  Onnell saw one of the surrounded Imperials go down, and he launched himself at the nearest nightwalker, sword swinging in a great sidearm swoop.

  The blade bit into flesh and lodged in bone; had the enemy been mortal, Onnell knew he would have been slain instantly.

  Nightwalkers were not mortal. This one reached up its free hand and grabbed Onnell's blade even before it turned to face him.

  Watery brown fluid dribbled from the wound, and the stink of rotting flesh assailed Onnell more strongly than ever. He grabbed the hilt of his sword in both hands and heaved, pulling the blade free from the nightwalker's neck, slicing bloodless flesh from its grasping fingers. The nightwalker had been a medium-sized man once, no more than that; it was far smaller than Onnell. Still, it took all Onnell's strength to free his weapon, and he had to throw himself off-balance to do it.

  That left the nightwalker an opening; it brought its own weapon up, a notched and rusted blade in the broad, hook-tipped Matuan style.

  If the nightwalker had had a weapon meant for stabbing, Onnell thought, it would have been able to run him through then and there, but the Matuan blade was meant for slashing and chopping, not for thrusting. Instead of jabbing the nightwalker swung the sword at Onnell with the point of the hook forward, trying to catch and rip. Onnell, with his much greater reach, was able to step back and let the blade pass harmlessly an inch or two from his chest.

  “You can't dodge forever,” the nightwalker said, as it stepped forward for another swing. Its voice was a thin, ugly wheeze; Onnell's earlier blow had cut into its voicebox.

  Onnell struggled to regain his balance; by the time he had done so he had retreated three more steps, the nightwalker slashing and hacking at him. Once he was stable he made a feint at the thing's chest, expecting it to parry, which would allow him to chop at its neck again.

  It didn't bother to parry, and his intended feint punched the point of his sword into dry, dead flesh. He slashed it free as the nightwalker grinned at him and chopped at his swordarm.

  The blow struck and drew blood, but Onnell's arm was already moving away; the wound was a superficial scrape that tore skin, but missed the muscle and bone.

  The pain forced Onnell to concentrate even as it angered him. He struck again, this time aiming backhanded for the nightwalker's neck.

  It brought its own weapon up to block, and Onnell turned his blow at the last second, chopping down at his foe's arm, instead. Muscles and tendons parted, and the Matuan sword sank out of line.

  The nightwalker grabbed at the hilt with its other hand, but too late – Onnell's next blow finished the work his first had started. The nightwalker's severed head rolled across its shoulder and tumbled to the ground.

  Something black, something half smoke and half shadow, erupted from the ruined stump of the dead thing's neck and vanished into the deepening night, and the corpse tumbled to the ground at Onnell's feet.

  Onnell had no time to admire his handiwork; two more nightwalkers were coming at him with raised weapons, a spear and a sword. A sword came out of the darkness behind one of them, sweeping toward its neck, and Onnell engaged the other.

  After that Onnell's view of the fight was confused, at best; he struck at the throat of anyone not wearing Imperial red, dodged or parried any blades headed his way, and tried not to get in anyone else's way.

  At one point, when the melee had lasted well over an hour and Onnell was ready to collapse from exhaustion and loss of blood, he glanced across the river and saw the main body of nightwalkers standing there, still on the eastern side of the water. Hundreds of them were lined up in neat rows, watching the battle and grinning.

  Even in his wearied, fuddled state, it was at that moment that Onnell realized that despite the blood on his arms and on his uniform and under his feet, despite the screams of the wounded and dying, despite the dozen or more heads he had chopped from decaying shoulders, this was not the great battle that would decide the Empire's fate.

  This was just a raid, a skirmish.

  Then he slipped in the mud as he dodged a spear-thrust, and a comrade's elbow hit him in the ear on his way down, and he rolled, dazed, to one side.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “Where were the guards?” Lord Shoule demanded again, gesticulating wildly.

  Lord Niniam sighed.

  “I've told you, Councillor,” he said. “Lord Kadan had reduced the palace guard to an absolute minimum, one-third its usual strength, so that the experienced soldiers of the Imperial Guard could be used in training or sent to fight the rebels. When the riots started in the Outer City, a messenger came from the commander there asking for help, and I sent the guards to help.”

  “Who was this commander you obeyed so readily?” Shoule asked.

  Lord Niniam blinked in surprise.

  “Come now, Lord Niniam,” Shoule said. “You obeyed his request without question – who was he,
that a member of the Imperial Council did his bidding so readily? Prince Granzer? Lord Kadan?”

  Prince Granzer shifted uneasily in his chair; Lord Kadan glowered. Lord Shoule, Granzer thought, was certainly being enthusiastic in his efforts to get at the truth; he just wished the enthusiasm were a bit more controlled.

  “I don't know,” Lord Niniam admitted. “I don't believe the messenger gave a name.”

  “Yet you sent away every guard in the palace at this messenger's behest?”

  “Well, the Empress and her children were away,” Niniam said, “and I had already received reports of the riot...”

  “The Empress was not away,” Shoule corrected him.

  “I had been told that she was away.”

  “By whom?”

  “By... well, by a messenger.”

  “The same one who brought word from this supposed commander in the Outer City?”

  Shamefaced, Niniam admitted, “I believe it was, yes.”

  “How is it you were so certain these reports were genuine, and not mere fabrications to support this messenger's claims?”

  “I could hear the rioters from the plaza!” Niniam protested. “Why would anyone lie about it?”

  “Really, Shoule,” Lord Sulibai murmured, “is there any need to harass the man like this?”

  Granzer threw Sulibai a quick glance, then focused on Shoule again.

  Shoule, standing at his place at the Council's table, turned slowly to glare at Sulibai, three seats away.

  “It would seem,” he said, “that some of my fellow Councillors fail to grasp the enormity of the crimes committed here, in our very capital.”

  “I grasp the enormity perfectly well, Shoule,” Sulibai said. “I simply see no point in badgering the innocents who were caught by surprise by the conspirators and tricked into doing their bidding.”

  “Are you so certain, then, that Lord Niniam is truly innocent?” Shoule shouted. “How do you know? A conspiracy like this – ”