by Bunch, Chris
“I don’t know, sir. I suppose so.”
“Did he see them?”
“I couldn’t say, sir.”
He glanced over at the ragged warriors. “Is there something wrong, sir? Should I order them away?”
“No. But you might be good enough to tell the emperor I was called away on urgent business. Be sure and extend my apologies.”
I no longer felt the rain, or my creaking bones. I remounted, and rode back forward, and spent the rest of the night with the pioneers, up to my chest in icy currents, lashing together crudely cut logs.
At dawn, someone gave me a cup of barely warm tea and a scrap of bread, and I found it a banquet. I mounted Brigstock and rode across the creaking bridge, shouting for the army to move out.
• • •
The marshes never stopped; they just slowly grew shallower and dryer, and there were more hummocks and trees growing from solid ground. Now we were in the Belaya Forest, and a vast feeling of relief ran through the ranks that the worst was over. At last we could see, through the light rain — actually more of a mist — the ground rise toward a series of rolling almost-foothills. The army was marching toward them on a series of tiny peninsulas that wound together. To our left and right — west and east — was the last of the swamp. We quickened our pace, wanting dry feet, dry fodder, and the chance to build a fire on the rising ground ahead.
Our last elements were clearing the fingers when the Maisirian army attacked from the marsh.
Their magicians laid spells of confusion, of indifference, of a kind of invisibility, so no one would trouble about what lay to the west, believing, without ever investigating, that there was nothing but mud and dankness. There the Maisirians had concealed themselves and waited.
They charged without even a signal and surged out of the swamp, ululating battle cries as they came.
They should’ve left us room for panicked flight. If the ground to the right had been forest or suebi, the troops might have broken. But with swamp on all sides except the front, there was nowhere to run.
The Maisirians still hadn’t learned that our army marched with fighting men scattered throughout the column, so they weren’t hitting just support units. After they’d butchered the stragglers and hangers-on, they slammed into corps led by Mercia Petre and Myrus Le Balafre.
These two reacted instantly, calmly if loudly, ordering all elements to turn left and prepare for the attack. Their officers and warrants bellowed terrible punishments for anyone who didn’t kill his Maisirian or six, and Saionji herself help the one who hesitated or dreamed of flight. The truth of the training was there: Make a soldier more afraid of his leaders than the enemy, and he’ll fight hard and long.
There was also a rage, long-buried, simmering, that the Maisirians wouldn’t stand and fight, but keep on with their endless back-stabbing. Now they were before us in the open, and we wanted blood.
The column turned on its left flank and went on line. Supply and other “soft” units were shouted to the right, to the new rear. I won’t pretend all this happened smoothly, or even happened in all columns. But there were enough soldiers who’d dropped their packs and had swords ready, and enough archers who’d grabbed a handful of shafts from quivers and sent them arcing toward the enemy, to stop the Maisirian first wave.
Before the second wave could attack through the hesitating first, other soldiers seized the stakes carried below our wagons for the bivouac stockades, and rammed them into the soft ground, angled toward the enemy. Then the second wave slammed into our lines.
I was well forward with the Twentieth Heavy Cavalry, the emperor’s carriage not far behind me, when a rider galloped up — although I’d already guessed what must be happening from the din.
Officers were shouting orders, and men were shrugging off packs and knocking bedrolls off their horses, lances and swords coming into their hands.
I slid from the mare I’d been riding, to mount the already-saddled Brigstock. I kicked him into a gallop, back to the emperor’s carriage. Tenedos had his wagons drawn into a circle, his bodyguard dismounted and ringing the site. He was ordering robed Brethren about, and the area was a scurry of staff officers and acolytes. An acolyte was sprinkling colored powder on the wet grass in arcane patterns, since there was no other way to mark the meadowland, and braziers were being lit. Magicians were ordering herbs mixed and dumped into the braziers, and unrolling bundles and sorting through their contents.
“Damastes, take charge of the cavalry,” the emperor ordered. His voice was completely calm. “Take ‘em out and try to hit these bastards on their flank. I’m going to bother them a bit myself. I’ve already sent reinforcements back down the line to Le Balafre and Petre.”
I saluted, and rode Brigstock back to the Twentieth. My gallopers and the Red Lancers were waiting. I sent quick commands to the dominas commanding the screen on the army’s former front: We’d march out to the right, then swing back to the fighting. After we turned, we’d go on line and take them. At the walk, we moved out.
I felt a sort of shimmering, a crawl and shiver on my muscles and nerves. Magic was about. The emperor’s spell was being cast. I was on the fringes, and saw trees and vines twist and lean, and felt malevolence, until we were “recognized” as friendly. This was the spell Tenedos had cast against Chardin Sher’s army, in the forest around the village of Dabormida. I’d thanked Tanis back then that I hadn’t witnessed such an evil. But now I would. The trees would come alive and reach for their foes. Branches would strangle, trees would fall and crush, roots would rise to trip and tear. Men would go mad in this horror, seeing things that must not be, and run screaming, to be crushed by another terror or cut down by the oncoming soldiers.
The trees were moving, coming alive, as if a gale were twisting them, but there was no wind and the rain fell straight from the sky. Men turned, looked at me, and their faces were white, afraid. I pretended laughter and shouted something about the emperor’s magic striking hard, and they forced courage. Then the crawling sensation was gone, and all was normal. I didn’t know what had happened, but logic said the Maisirian wizards had broken Tenedos’s spell.
Now it would be their turn, unless the emperor could rebuild his power quickly. He wasn’t quite fast enough, and red splashes flickered through the rain. It was as if fireflies were attacking, or perhaps those tiny redbirds that flocked through Cimabue’s jungles in the Time of Births. Then they were on us, and they weren’t anything sensate or friendly, but bits of pure flame, straight from Shahriya’s realm, unquenched by rain, drawing close. They found, clung, and flared, and screams began.
One touched my forearm, and a fiery brand seared. The flame grew bigger, feeding on me, on my energy, and my mind reeled in agony and fear, remembering that greater fire I’d flung myself into not long ago. My other hand scrabbled at my waist, and Yonge’s dagger was in it. I scraped frantically, and the flame fell away, and the pain was gone, though my sleeve was scorched through. At first I thought it was the silver of the knife’s pommel and hilt, but then I realized I’d touched the flame with bare steel.
Other men made the same discovery, and scraped swords, knives, even arrowheads across the tiny killers, and they vanished. But there were those who hadn’t been quick enough, or who panicked. Their bodies became flame, and they fell, writhing, and were dead. Horses reared, neighing in terror and pain as they burned. The formations nearly broke, and then the flames were gone, as if the rain instead of a counterspell had quenched them.
The emperor sent an order down the line for Le Balafre and Petre to attack. But those two hadn’t needed orders, knowing as they did that the best counterattack is immediate, and the best way to break an ambush is straight into it. The two tribunes were the first to charge, swords high, beside their banners. Our men shouted loud for Numantia, and attacked.
They cut down the second wave and the remnants of the first wave, and moved on, lines wavering, then firming, rain washing blood from their spears and swords as they rolle
d inexorably toward the Maisirian lines.
Now it was time for me to put my cavalry on line, strike for the Maisirian left flank, and rip them apart. Except that …
I make no claims to having the slightest ability in magic or any sense beyond a normal man’s. So perhaps I heard something, far distant. Or possibly there might’ve been the gleam of armor, or a flag, or even a fire.
But I found myself staring to my right, away from the Maisirian lines, toward that tempting, rolling high ground we’d been hurrying for. A fine place to camp. Or mount an attack from, using the slope to add weight to the charge. And I’d seen no Maisirian cavalry other than outriders …
I called for my gallopers and snapped orders. Some goggled, and I shouted “Yes, yes,” and said “Now, ride out, damn your eyes” and they obeyed. Tribune Safdur, nominally in charge of the cavalry, gaped, but said nothing. I sent two of my staff officers back to the army, one to tell the emperor of my stupidity and disobedience, the other asking Linerges, commanding the corps just behind mine, to attack with us.
Slowly the great mass of the Numantian cavalry swung right, away from the Maisirian attack, toward the high ground, as stupid a thing as I’ve ever done, and so I signaled for the trot. Bugles rang, and the monstrous mailed fist reached out. I kicked Brigstock to the gallop, and we swept through the flankers until we were at the cavalry’s head, my Red Lancers close behind.
Men and horses one tempered weapon, we hurtled up the gentle slope, over its crest, into the Maisirian cavalry. They were drawn up, waiting to make their surprise attack as we smashed into their flank as a lance rips into a soldier’s unarmored side. They tried to turn, but were too slow, and we shattered them as a hammer smashes crystal.
A man swung a morningstar, and I let the weapon’s chain wrap around my lance, then yanked it from his grip. He flailed, not knowing what to do next, and Curd killed him. I threw the now-useless lance into another Maisirian’s face, and let Svalbard finish him. I had my sword in one hand, Yonge’s long dagger in the other, as I parried a sword stroke, swung at my attacker, missed, and he vanished into the fray.
A spear darted toward my face. I flinched away, and the spearman grew an arrow from his eye and went down. A riderless horse pawed at Brigstock, and he screamed and smashed the animal with an iron shoe, as I gutted a man running at me swinging a sword over his head. There were two men attacking me, getting in each other’s way, swearing at each other, and I put my blade in one’s stomach and let him roll back, screaming, into his fellow, then slashed that man’s thigh open and he lost interest in me.
The battle went on … and on … and we broke their lines, reformed, came back, and again butchered our way through their ranks. I looked for banners that might mark King Bairan or, better yet, the azaz, hoping to find an easy way to end this battle, this war, letting red anger touch me, but I saw nothing.
I saw fifty men on identical white stallions, all wearing black, with a yellow banner at their head. At their head was an armored man with an open helm. I recognized him, Rauri Rewald, commander of their cavalry, whom I’d met in Jarrah, and he knew me at the same instant, and we cried orders that were the same:
“Take that man!”
“Kill him!”
My Red Lancers and his bodyguard surged together, and all was demoniac madness. A man slashed at my leg, and I felt a bit of pain, saw a bit of blood as I slashed and his sword — and arm — went spinning into the air, and then I forgot about him.
Another Maisirian reeled from some unseen blow, and I smashed my blade into his helmet and sent him tumbling. I may have killed another man, perhaps two, maybe three, but I don’t remember precisely.
I do remember the sudden open space in this roiling slaughter, with no one in it but Rewald on his prancing white horse and myself. Rewald’s two-handed sword struck, and I knocked it away, and then chanced a thrust that clanged harmlessly against his breastplate. He swung with all his might, and my arm went numb as I took his power on my shield.
He opened his mouth to shout something, no doubt a great challenge to ring down the years, and I had no reply but a darting thrust that took him in the face and went up into his brain, through his skull, sent his helmet spinning away. His eyes gaped, then he fell away, off my blade, and I heard a great wailing.
But his men didn’t stop fighting. The swirl of their death went on, and on, and then there were blood-drenched horses pawing in death, and piled, black-armored bodies moaning as they tried to deny Saionji’s summons. But all too many of my Lancers were down as well. I gasped for air, not remembering having breathed for hours, days, and saw, across the bloody field, weapons being flung down, riders galloping away, men holding their hands up in surrender, and I realized we’d taken the field.
Then the emperor’s final spell was sent against the Maisirians in the swamps. No Numantian knew what to make of it for an instant, but the Maisirians appeared to have gone mad, suddenly swinging at nothing, clawing at their eyes, screaming in pain, having no mind for war — and then our soldiers cut into them.
The spell was simple, nothing more than deerflies. Of a sort. Deerflies that were invisible, whose bites burned like the Maisirian fire, whose searing agony shattered a fighter’s thoughts — and let his attacker end the contest. The magic lasted for brief seconds, but that was enough. The wavering Maisirian line broke, and soldiers in their thousands were surrendering or fleeing.
We’d finally met the Maisirian army, and shattered it. But there was no formal surrender. Nothing came from king Bairan, nothing from the jedaz, the leaders of his army. The remains of the Maisirian army fled north once more.
But the emperor was content. “We have them,” he said. “Their king can’t allow this war to continue. Not after this.” Then he said something strange. “And the price has been met. Now the power is on my side. Now the way is open to Jarrah.”
But the cost was terrible. Almost thirty thousand of our finest — infantry, cavalry, skirmishers — were dead, dying, or desperately injured on this nameless field. Our sorcerers and chirurgeons did what they could to help the wounded, but all too often there was nothing but a moment’s prayer and finding a bit of cloth to lay across newly empty eyes. Among the dead were Mercia Petre and his aide, Phillack Herton, who I truly hope had been more than just a companion and servant, had given my friend love.
That night, we built pyres and sacrificed.
I watched the fires rage and remembered Mercia, that unemotional, dry, sometimes slovenly man, whose only life was the army.
There was a man beside me, and I saw that it was Le Balafre. His leg was bandaged, and he had his arm in a sling. He stared long at Petre’s flaming memorial, then said, so quietly I barely heard his words:
“It was a good death. Our kind of death.” Then he walked away, into darkness.
The way was open to Jarrah.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE EMPTY CITY
Once again I looked down at Jarrah’s sprawl, and this time my skin crept. It’s one thing to see a small town like Irthing abandoned; it’s quite another to see a metropolis like Jarrah in a misting rain with never a horse or man about, not a chimney puffing smoke or any sound but the wind whistling down empty avenues.
We’d made the march to Jarrah in barely six days, and our scouts and skirmishers had entered the city’s outskirts on the morning of the seventh. They found nothing, and had the good sense to take defensive positions and send word to the emperor. He’d gone forward with an entire corps for his bodyguard, and taken the Chare Brethren with him. They laid spell after spell to see if Jarrah had been turned into one great sorcerous trap, but they discovered nothing.
I tried to imagine a people so obedient they’d march into the wilderness at their king’s orders, and thought of how many helpless people were doomed to return to the Wheel in those harsh forests to the south. What was Bairan’s plan? What did he intend? Had he gone insane?
The emperor ordered the army to set up camp outside the city. He want
ed Jarrah intact, not as a looted ruin. The disappointed grumbles from the army were muted, since no one knew what snares had been laid.
Two regiments of cavalry were to reconnoiter the city, and I’d “suggested” to Safdur that it be the Seventeenth and the Twentieth, my favorites among the elite formations, and said I’d lead them.
The sound of our horses’ hooves was very loud on the cobbles as we entered the city. This time, I did it by the book, posting squads at each crossroads, never committing my forces until an area was cleared. My goal was Moriton and Bairan’s palace. Halfway through the city I ran short of men and sent for two infantry regiments to replace my vedettes, then continued my leapfrogging advance.
We found a few Maisirians, mostly ancients or those who were beyond anyone’s law. They scuttled for hiding places, and we made no move to stop them.
The gates of Moriton were barred. We cast grapnels over them, and half a dozen volunteers went up the ropes. Minutes later, the gates swung open. We rode past the Octagon, and the gates yawned. With three men I went inside. The cells were empty. I saw a body, impaled on one of the tall glass spikes of the inner wall. It was the skull-smiling Chief Warder, Shikao. That was a puzzle — certainly King Bairan’s soldiers wouldn’t have permitted that. So what did happen to the prisoners? Where were they?
We went up the many-colored drive to King Bairan’s palace. I went in, saw my breath fogging in the empty, unheated corridors and audience chambers, and heard my boots clatter in the emptiness.
I made one further incursion, to the end of Moriton, where the walls brooded against the Belaya Forest, to the dark castle of the azaz. We saw no one, and its gates were sealed. We didn’t enter. The azaz would certainly have left wards against visitors.
We made our report to the emperor.
Tenedos exploded. “How dare this barbaric bastard call himself a king? And these damned people who’re his subjects — fucking idiot peasants! What are they doing? Are they too gods-damned dumb to realize they’ve lost? Where the hells is Bairan’s peace delegation? Where the hells are the white flags?”
