Imager’s Battalion

by Jr. L. E. Modesitt

  Then Quaeryt watched as the last ranks of Eleventh Regiment’s fourth company began to move forward.

  He could only estimate how far the leading squads of Eleventh Regiment had gone when the initial volley of musket shots ripped into the troopers of Khaern’s first company. A second volley did not follow immediately, but Quaeryt could see that one of the spindly catapults behind the musketeers composing the second line of defenders began to arch, as if being winched back to release something. With no doubts as to what that might be, Quaeryt imaged away the smallest chunk of ropelike cable.

  The catapult buckled, and whatever was in the sling or bucket tumbled backward and dropped just behind the catapult frame. Then Antiagon Fire flared up from the earthworks that held the catapult. Quaeryt could not hear, but could imagine, the screams of men being consumed by living fire of crimson-green and yellow.

  He looked to the Bovarian reinforcements, but unsurprisingly none of them had moved from their reserve positions higher on the low slope.

  The sound of another volley of musket shots echoed back toward Quaeryt, but the smoke indicated that it had been aimed from defenders well away from Eleventh Regiment and opposite the western side of the Telaryn forces, at some of the marshal’s regiments who were advancing more slowly than was Eleventh Regiment. Everything he does is slower … but it won’t help him that much today.

  Quaeryt looked to a second catapult, but it wasn’t moving. He concentrated on imaging several tiny pieces of white iron into a space where he thought the Antiagon Fire canisters might be … but nothing happened. He decided against trying again, because trying to replicate his success with the first catapult through blind imaging could easily wear him out before the Bovarians reacted in the way he needed. And then he would need all the strength he could muster … and more.

  He didn’t want to think about the “more” part yet.

  Another volley of musket fire ripped into Eleventh Regiment, and troopers went down, and horses screamed.

  Then a rolling rumble echoed out of the north. For a moment Quaeryt thought it must have been thunder, but a quick glance skyward confirmed that the moderately high gray clouds were not that dark, and that there were no lightning flashes.

  Gouts of dirt, turf, stones, and who knew what else erupted into the air less than a hundred yards in front of Eleventh Regiment’s first company.

  As he kept riding, Quaeryt tried to judge the distance between the first riders of Eleventh Regiment and the earthworks ahead. “Imager Horan, forward! Beside me.”

  Horan rode forward. “Sir?”

  “Do you see the earthworks directly before Eleventh Regiment?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I need you to image them flat, as wide a section as you can without exhausting yourself. Just push the dirt and fill back over the defenders.” Quaeryt lurched in the saddle as the mare rode over something uneven, then caught himself.

  “Now, sir?”

  “Now. That’s so that Eleventh Regiment can gallop through and put a break in the defenses.” And so that the cannoneers won’t be able to fire there without hitting the defenders who will rush to fill the breach. “Threkhyl! Can you do the same for the earthworks directly behind the one Horan is targeting?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  In moments, there was a space some fifty yards wide where there had been an earthen barrier, and some fifty yards behind that and several yards higher was an even wider area of flattened earth.

  Quaeryt glanced at Horan, whose face had paled, and at Threkhyl, whose face had not, then back at the Bovarians. For a moment all action seemed to stop on the low slope that held the Bovarians.

  Then Khaern reacted immediately, putting Eleventh Regiment into a full gallop toward the gap in the Bovarian lines.

  Unfortunately, within several moments, the Bovarian cannoneers reacted as well, and cannonballs tore into the midst of the charging troopers.

  Quaeryt began to smell the acrid odor of powder, as well as the dryness of dust thrown into the air by the impacts of the cannonballs. Ignoring the bitterness in his nostrils, he turned to his left. “Voltyr … can you image a spray of white-hot iron fragments into the cannon emplacement directly up the slope from us?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In moments a series of small explosions crescendoed into a large roar, and the ground shook. Then white and black smoke rose from the emplacement and began to drift slowly downhill and then across the Bovarian earthworks.

  “I can do another, sir!” called Voltyr.

  “Do it, then! But just one more.”

  A second cannon emplacement went up in a roar.

  Quaeryt glanced across to the west side of the battlefield, finally standing in the stirrups before he saw another series of musket volleys rip into Deucalon’s forces, this time at the middle of the assault. Still standing in the stirrups and knowing that he was making himself a target, he scanned the earthworks and the slope, trying to see the damage and the gaps in the defenses.

  There were a few gaps here and there, but what were a few hundred yards at most across a mille of defenders?

  Yet the Bovarian reserves remained planted on the upper slope.

  “Voltyr! Can you take out a cannon emplacement to the left of the last one?” Quaeryt hoped that the smoke from such an explosion would create an impression among the Bovarian commanders of more damage to the defenses than was actually the case.

  “Yes, sir!”

  Quaeryt caught sight of a third catapult being winched back. “Smaethyl! The catapult to the right of the breach ahead! Take it down! Now!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Quaeryt could barely hear the response, but he did, and he watched as the catapult bent forward in its release—and the cable snapped and released the canister almost straight up. The dark object went upward end over end and then came down forward of the emplacement, spewing Antiagon Fire largely in front of the earthworks.

  At least it didn’t land in the middle of eleventh company.

  “Subcommander! Down, sir!” That was Zhelan’s voice.

  Quaeryt dropped back into his saddle. Instants later he heard and half felt a volley of musket balls pass overhead.

  More cannonballs ripped into the rear of Eleventh Regiment, less than twenty yards ahead of Fifth Battalion, with more acrid smoke drifting toward Quaeryt and Fifth Battalion, but the first companies of the regiment had reached the gap in the defenses and were cutting down the defenders who were trying to fill the gap.

  As more of Eleventh Regiment surged forward into the gap, finally a mass of Bovarian reinforcements began to hurry down from their reserve positions toward the attacking Telaryn troopers.

  Despite heavy musket fire from the west side of the defensive emplacements, one of Deucalon’s regiments had broken through as well.

  Yet more and more troops, mostly foot, poured over the hill and down toward the advancing Telaryn forces, a mass that had to outnumber the attackers by twice … if not three times—and Quaeryt had no idea how many more might be held in reserve.

  Not only that, but he could see that he and Fifth Battalion, despite his efforts to keep some space, were so hemmed in by the other regiments that they had nowhere to go except continuing forward into the cannon fire.

  Another gout of soil, grasses, and far worse erupted just ahead and to Quaeryt’s left.

  Like it or not …

  You can’t wait any longer. You can’t!

  Quaeryt did not even attempt to draw in the other imagers … but instead reached out to the River Aluse, and then across the entire hillside before him, seeking any source of heat possible …

  Lines of heat and cold crisscrossed over him and through him, but he continued to concentrate on three things—seeking heat, flattening and destroying everything in front of the Telaryn forces, and, just to be sure, imaging a coating of impenetrable white alabaster across every exterior surface of the Chateau Regis—the last, because he wasn’t quite certain that what he was doing wou
ld work without at least some constructive imaging. At the same time, he concentrated on holding links to the river, and to the warmth of thousands of bodies of poor hapless Bovarian troopers and officers, and even to all those within the Chateau Regis, for they too would pay … as would Quaeryt.

  Of that, he had no doubt, even before the last links of his imaging all came together, and he felt himself frozen in place in the saddle, both moving and motionless, as if time itself had solidified into a solid block of ice around him, yet from nowhere he could feel the needles of ice being jabbed into him by winds that, using those ice needles, were scouring everything before them, leaving nothing standing anywhere, no trees, no bushes, no cannon, no catapults, no Bovarians, no earthworks … nothing …

  Nothing except the wailing and pleading of those whose warmth he had seized, whose voiceless voices screamed in the white darkness …

  And blinding bitter white wrapped itself around him and the block of ice that held him, locked to him and to his shields, shields that seemingly had done little or nothing to protect him from the devastation he had unleashed onto the Bovarians—and Eleventh Regiment and those Telaryn troopers brave and determined enough to have breached the Bovarian defenses.

  With the white chill came a soaring roaring cyclone of ice needles that felt as though they had shredded Quaeryt’s uniform, all he wore, and flensed even the very flesh from his skin.

  And then the flames of the Namer burned him even while he found himself in frozen agony … unable to speak or move … unable to close his eyes, unable to escape into unconsciousness …

  … unable to escape the tens of thousands of wailing voices …

  81

  No matter where he seemed to be, or where he looked, there was first the chill, and the whiteness that never ended, even in darkness, but worse were the wailings, oh so many of them, voices … cries … so many of them, all pleading, questioning … as if … as if …

  He could not go there, not after what he had done, and did not resist as the swirling storm of tiny white ice needles and lacy flakes swirled around him, then enfolded him even as it sliced away who and what he was, carrying him off in bits of whiteness until he was no more …

  Then … as if in the eye of that storm, all was quiet, and he opened his eyes and beheld … whiteness, more whiteness everywhere. He looked down … what he wore was white. His arms were white … as were his hands … and even his fingernails … but before he could think about what that meant, or even where he was … the howling blizzard of white ice knives carved him into chips of ice and flakes of snow and swirled his being back into the storm.

  Yet when the tempest subsided into intermittent flakes, burning flakes that buried him in chill, somewhere beyond the whiteness, he heard words, sounds carried on the howling storm that buffeted his ears, blinded his vision …

  “… he’ll eat … drink … but … not hear…”

  “… and at night…”

  “… as always…”

  “… the doors hold?”

  “… so far…”

  He winced as the storm grasped him again … and the blinding white turned to darkness out of which hurled white spears of ice that crashed against his shields, shields that were so difficult to hold, so tiring … but so necessary to keep out the worst of the wailing that assailed him …

  “… Bhayar insists…”

  “… how could he not…”

  Bhayar … Bhayar? The name … it should have meant something, as once it had, but the meaning disintegrated under the assault of the ice and the white flakes that should have been soft and cold, but were not, as they cut and then burned his skin wherever they touched, they burrowed into his flesh and turned it to ice.

  And … again … the voices, so close and yet so far.

  “… Subcommander, sir…”

  “… did what you had to…”

  Did what you had to? Done under the sun, under the clouds, done for the crowds … to the crowds …

  His eyes clinched shut, as he recalled the voices, the thousands of voices … and their pleas … or had they even had a chance to plead?

  He let the storm carry him away, bearing the burning cold so much more easily than those voices he could not help but hear across the devastation of whiteness that stretched in all directions away from and around him.

  “… here but not here…”

  “… weeks now … Quaeryt…”

  Quaeryt? Another name he should recall … so familiar, but did he want to remember it? Had there not been …

  Once more he surrendered to the swirling storm before those forlorn wails surged over him.

  82

  Amid the swirls of ice and the endless snowflakes, there was a voice … a gentle voice, a voice pleading … and the words tore at him, yet did not burn or cut as did the snowflakes or the ice knives that flensed him into the ice mist where he did not have to think … before he once again stood in the tempest, to be cut apart once more.

  He peered through the storm … but how could he, a man who had become nothing but swirling bits of ice and snow, even peer?

  The voice faded as the storm rose once more, drowning out both the insistent wailings and the gentle voice.

  But when it subsided into a mere flurry of white, that voice, a voice he should recognize, returned, and there was something … something beyond the wailing and the pleading of the other voices. He tried to look beyond the storm and whiteness that swirled in and around him, and then for a moment, he saw a figure seated beside him. “Who…?”

  “Are you here, dearest, really here?” Warm arms wrapped around him. “Please be here. Please stay here this time.”

  This time? Had he gone somewhere?

  Then his eyes, eyes that had been open and seen nothing, saw her—saw Vaelora. Icy tears oozed down his cheeks. “You’re … here.”

  “I’ve been here for days, dearest. You’ve so worried everyone. I’m here. I’m with you.”

  He looked around the room, a chamber whose walls were shimmering white stone, where even the single chair on which Vaelora sat was white, as was the one where he was seated. Even the bed and the coverlets were white, as was the ceiling, the stone floor, the square rug … everything …

  “Where…?” His voice was rusty.

  “In a tower chamber of a High Holder’s summer residence,” replied Vaelora. “It’s three milles north of the Chateau Regis.”

  “But … it’s all white…”

  “It is,” she said, gently clasping his left hand.

  As her warm grip tightened, he could feel something strange, wrong about his hand, as if he had but a thumb and two fingers. He looked down. All his fingers were there, but when he tried to tighten his own fingers around hers, the little finger and the one beside it, the ring finger, for all that he had never worn a ring, did not move.

  “My fingers…”

  “That’s all, dearest,” Vaelora said warmly, squeezing his hand tightly. “Everything else is fine. And they may yet recover.”

  “But…?” He looked down at his forearms, bare below the elbows. Every single hair was white, brilliant snow-white, not the blond-white of his hair, not brown or black. Snow-white, white against his honey-gold-colored skin.

  “Your hair is white, too, but it looks good on you,” Vaelora said quickly.

  Quaeryt looked at his right hand. His fingernails were white as well. Someone had trimmed them, but they were solid white. Snow-white. Not painted in the Antiagon fashion. Just … white. He didn’t want to think about that. Not when considering it might call back the storm. “How … how did you get here so quickly?”

  “It … wasn’t so quick. I had a farsight vision. You were surrounded by sheets of white rain. That was what it looked like, but I found out when I got here that it was ice. Then I had to persuade Aelina—and some of Bhayar’s officers—to let me go. They feared a squad would not be sufficient protection, but I dared not take more.”

  Quaeryt had a sinking fee
ling. “Are matters that bad in Solis?”

  “Not any longer. That’s because of you and the imagers. Once word came about you…”

  “Me?”

  “Bhayar could explain that better than I.”

  Quaeryt could see she didn’t want to talk about that, and as long as whatever difficulty had eased in Solis … but that raised a more urgent question. “What date is it?”

  “The nineteenth of Feuillyt.”

  “Almost a month … a month?”

  “Yes, dearest.”

  “When did you arrive?”

  “A week ago Lundi.”

  “You’ve been here more than a week?”

  She nodded. “At first you didn’t hear me, but the last few days, something was different, and I kept hoping. Then you would stop listening and murmur about the wailing and the pleading…”

  “What happened? Why can’t I remember?”

  “That’s because you didn’t see what happened,” she said. “Khalis told me that when the ice flakes fell from everywhere you sat in the saddle and never moved. They had to pry the reins from your hand, and three of them had to lift you out of the saddle.”

  “You haven’t told me what happened.”

  “You secured a great victory for Bhayar.” Her words were even.

  “How great a victory?” Even as he asked, he feared that he already knew. Still … he had to know. He disengaged his hand from hers and stood, twinges running through his bad left leg, then slowly walked, his legs shaking under him, even with Vaelora supporting him, toward the window, its interior trim white, the glass set in small panes suggesting that the frame was old and belonged to someone of wealth. But then, High Holders seldom lacked for golds.

  “Dearest…” Vaelora stopped him before he could reach the window.

  “What?” He looked into her warm brown eyes and saw only love and concern.

  “Remember it is now fall, not harvest.”