Honnis abruptly gathered himself. His face became the severe disagreeable mask she had seen so often before. He fixed her with his withering stare.
"Why did the mighty empires of the Northern and Southern Continents crumble so many hundredwinters ago?" he asked as if she was some pathetic first-phase student.
"The Great Upheavals," she answered. "And they were?"
"Internal strife. If you require a detailed accounting, I can recite what historians have cobbled together from that chaotic period—"
"Since the time of the Upheavals," Honnis said, trampling her words heedlessly, "what has been the prevalent attitude toward wizards?"
It was a broad question, yet it was still answerable. "Practitioners of magic have been feared by most cultures."
"Why?" Honnis asked.
"They were made to blame for the Upheavals.
They..."
Honnis's gaze fairly drilled into her now. She halted. His bald head moved slightly in a significant nod. "Yes," he said, voice gone breathy and weak once more. "It was the misuse of magic that caused the Great Upheavals. Magicians were shunned because they were to blame. Those mighty empires were no wiser, in the end, than Matokin and his followers."
She needed to sit. She groped behind herself, found the stool, spilled a pile of pages off of it, and sat. She could say nothing. Shock gripped her.
"There is something else I wish to say."
Praulth blinked. Some moments had passed. Honnis was watching her, barely able to lift his head. She moved the stool nearer, though she didn't take his hand.
"I cannot be proud of you," he said, measuring out the words. "I don't have the right. Actually no one can properly take pride in another's accomplishments. It's a sickening practice. But—your work has been exceptional. You do not know how gifted you are. I labored over each and every field report I received from Cultat's scouts. Yes, I recognized Dardas's patterns. But I could not—not with nearly the degree of accuracy you have demonstrated— predict his movements. You know Dardas." That fragile smile came once more. "Your tactic—using the Battle of Torran Flats ... brilliant."
Praulth felt tears threaten her eyes a second time. Whatever Honnis had done, it was for a greater good. For the alliance Cultat was hoping to build. For the defeat of the Felk.
"Thank you, Master Honnis," she said.
"It's Dardas. You know that."
"Of course, Master Honnis."
"No ... Praulth. It is Dardas."
She stared.
"Let me," he said, "tell you about resurrection magic ..."
THE BATTLE OF Torran Flats. Brilliant? Perhaps. To Praulth it seemed the obvious tactic. She had simply approached the problem logically. She knew Dardas's style. She could predict his movements. How to engage him in the field was merely a matter of analysis and deduction.
How to engage Dardas. Not Weisel. No, Weisel was no imitator after all.
Incredible ... this war of magic. How historically significant it all was.
Torran Flats was the site of one of Dardas's greatest victories some two hundred and fifty years ago. An army had stood against his forces. The leader was a rival Northland warlord who had some knowledge of battle tactics. He had arrayed his troops to draw Dardas's warriors into a trap. It was a fairly cunning ambush, relying on flanking units that remained out of sight until the crucial moment.
Dardas of course didn't take the bait. He outflanked the flankers and cut a butchering swath through
the enemy army, the remains of which he absorbed into his own forces.
Praulth's counsel to Cultat was to reconstruct this very same battle scenario. Cultat should array his forces (whatever forces he could or had managed to raise) to duplicate the placement of that ancient warlord's troops. Weisel— Dardas—would recognize the "trap" and enact the same outflanking maneuver.
It was an artifice, of course. The Felk, when they moved to outflank, would be spread out, separated. There was unavoidable vulnerability there. A decisive forward thrust at the right time and place could not be successfully defended against. The Felk could be slashed in two.
Praulth knew this. She had previously studied the Battle of Torran Flats. She had debated it exhaustively with other war studies students. She had reenacted it, on paper. Dardas was a dazzling war commander, likely the best that history had to offer. But he wasn't infallible—particularly when his enemy was armed with such intimate knowledge of his strategies and techniques.
She found the door to their chamber unlocked, Xink still awake inside.
"I told you," she said, hearing how inert her voice sounded, "I like that door locked, always."
"Sorry."
She removed her robe. Leaving the faculty compound, she had seen first light in the sky. The coming day would be overcast.
"How is Master Honnis?" Xink asked.
She dropped herself onto the bed. "He died. Come to bed with me."
He stood hesitantly from the chair where he was sitting. This time it was Praulth who didn't meet his eyes. She merely waited to feel the comfort of his body. She needed that solace now. Her role in the Felk war was done.
RADSTAC (4)
THE BANDITS HAD fast horses that had the memories of secret trails through the scrub and woods. Here and there they crossed a road, empty, the merchant caravans that were the bandits' prey long gone. The summer, Radstac had learned, had been a poor one for this professional band The short, heavily muscled bandit chief Anzal opined that this buggering Felk war had ruined business for her and her kind, perhaps permanently.
It was possible, Radstac mused. This was no simple Isthmus tussle between feuding city-states. If the Felk remade this entire land in their image, they would have no more enemies. All would be Felk. And so the Isthmus would no longer be a reliable source of petty wars in which she could fight.
A mercenary needed wars. And she needed her mansid
She peeled one away from its wax paper and bit off half She was, inevitably, building up a tolerance to the painstakingly cultivated narcotic. Fortunately the batch that Deo had procured for her was particularly potent. The fearsome ache that sang through her teeth now was evidence enough of that.
She had not dismounted her horse to take her dose. It was done in the saddle, her black mount and those of the twelve bandits keeping up a pounding pace through the wilderness.
Deo rode at her side. He made no complaints about the punishing speed at which they were moving. Barely a meal break in the day, scarcely two watches of sleep in the night. Northward. To the Felk. As fast as possible.
For Radstac this was decidedly different from being loosed on a battlefield to hack at some arbitrary enemy. A new role. Bodyguard. Escort. Protector. It was truly a shame, then, that her charge was
doomed.
She neatly ducked the gnarled elbow of a branch as the trail suddenly narrowed. The bandits rode both ahead and behind.
"How far from Trael are we, do you suppose?" the Petgrad noble grunted, obviously feeling the soreness and cramped muscles of their prolonged riding.
"Are we going there after all?" Radstac asked drolly.
"No."
Simple, toneless. Yet she heard the regret there, the finality. The mansid was rapidly sharpening her perceptions. Deo was still waiting for an answer.
She said, "I believe we are passing or past the city already." The bandits, by her calculations, had been taking their group just east of Trael.
"Another day or two, in that case, until we reach the Felk."
Then what? But Radstac left the retort unsaid. She hadn't been hired to dissuade this man from his goal. His scheme to infiltrate the vast mass of the Felk army and murder its commander, however, was probably just a vague fantasy in his mind.
Of course, he might change his plans at the last moment. When he saw the naked reality of what he was facing. When his death was there waiting for his next forward step.
Radstac, despite years of seeing men and women lose their lives in battle,
hoped Deo would recant. This was senseless. A waste.
She eyed Deo sidelong, his handsome rugged profile. A face of heavy bones. Fatigue in those blue eyes. Being born into the vast privileges of the nobility hadn't ruined his honor, his sense of responsibility. She wondered—the thought sharp and mans «/-inspired—if he would have in fact made a better premier of Petgrad than Cultat.
Now he had recast himself as an assassin, a ready-made folk hero who would be remembered for a failed, but valiant, deed.
And she—would she be remembered by these Isthmusers? If so, it could only be as the one who had allowed the hero to meet his fate.
She didn't want it. She wanted Deo alive. Ahead, a hand flew into the air among the trees and bramble. Anzal, on the lead horse. She was a very able leader, Radstac judged. Her band was loyal. Yet the full dozen had been purchased with Deo's promissory note.
Radstac lunged for Deo's reins, even as she nimbly drew her own mount to a halt. But Deo had seen the signal, too. The whole band was stopping, hooves clambering, dust roiling through the trees.
Her hand fell to her sword. If there was to be a fight, it wouldn't be the first one she had fought while under the influence of mansid. It wouldn't be the tenth. Her eyes darted all around, ears tuned sharply. Nothing came out of the dust.
The bandits were silent, weapons at the ready. At the front of the pack, Anzal was standing in her stirrups, peering at something through the trees that Radstac—maddeningly—couldn't see. Not even the leaf half she'd chewed helped. But this territory belonged to these bandits; they knew it intimately, and they knew when something wasn't right. Or so it seemed.
Deo sat calmly in the saddle.
Finally Anzal came down from hers. Murmuring softly to the others in the band, she walked back down the line. On foot she barely came up to Radstac's kidskin boot.
"Someone's encamped," the bandit chief said quietly. Her eyes indicated the direction through the woods.
"An army?" Radstac asked. Had they reached the Felk faster than expected? She didn't like the thought.
"Smaller. A lot smaller." Anzal went to tell the rest.
Scouts, thought Radstac, though the camp might be anything, including a band of rival bandits. But instinct, when it was honed by so many hard-bitten years, was to be trusted.
They all dismounted.
"Why don't we go around?" Deo asked, but he spoke . the question mildly. Anzal had returned.
"Turfs ours," the chief said, shrugging her muscular shoulders. "If somebody's on it, we need to know who. They might have friends."
Which meant this wasn't simply a matter of animal territoriality, Radstac noted. True professionals then. That was good.
"I'll go with you," Deo said to Anzal, who was gathering up a small party.
"No need."
"If I decide I go, I go."
The chief frowned a moment, but Deo's words were certainly true. She moved off to the tall lad who was the expert archer.
"Why should you go?" Radstac wanted to know. It meant, of course, that she would go with him.
"Do these waylayers know the Felk?" A glimmer of his familiar charming smile crossed his features.
"Do you?" she countered. "Have you ever laid eyes on one in your life?"
"No. I never cared for the Isthmus's less gentle northerly climes. But from what I've gathered from the intelligence reports Uncle has received, I believe I can recognize a uniformed soldier. Or a wizard."
Radstac didn't fear wizards or wizardry. She was of the Southsoil, and she gave no quarter to baseless dreads. Nonetheless, she didn't know the extent of the powers these Felk mages might possess, or how she could successfully protect her client against such talents.
Regardless of what magic could do, she told herself as they prepared to move out, a blade could always cut flesh.
She had her heavy combat sword in hand as they fanned out quietly through the trees. Anzal, the archer, one other bandit, herself, and Deo. Deo still at her side. He hadn't drawn his sword, but he was tensed, ready, as they stalked through the woods.
It was late morning. There were birds making song and flitting among the wide canopy of branches overhead, small animals rustling through the brush. Good. Cover noise. Radstac let a glint of teeth show in her doubly scarred face. She felt the dark powerful current of combat readiness moving her blood through her veins.
They crept along low, in the direction Anzal had indicated. The three bandits demonstrated admirable stealth. Radstac peered ahead, picking out the movements of individual leaves, careful not to let her growing frustration throw her off. What exactly had Anzal seen?
Then she picked out the figures. They were glimpses among the trees. A camp. Yes. They were in a clearing. Radstac smelled meat cooked over a fire.
Anzal was gesturing sharply at her. She had missed the first signal. The bandit chief glared; Radstac still was not popular with this band. She put a hand to Deo's arm, and they both halted, crouched in the brush.
They were six. Two in dark robes, four in military uniforms. They lolled about the small camp. Deo studied the figures intently. Radstac had already plotted out the best way to raid the camp and slay its occupants—not that she saw any need for such an action. Deo's original idea was surely best. Just go around this camp. Anzal signaled the retreat.
When they returned to the horses, it was Deo who spoke first. "They're Felk. They've got to be scouting out Trael."
"Shouldn't we take them, just for the sake of good manners?" ventured the archer with a smirk.
"Shut up, Frog." Anzal shot the boy a glare. To Deo she said, "I agree. Scouts. That army's not going to be far away now."
Deo nodded. "But we need to capture one of those soldiers. I've got questions I want to ask."
"No way to pick off one," Radstac said. "Have to raid the whole camp."
Anzal's ready glare turned her way once more. "We can handle that. But what about those two in the robes? Are they soldiers, too?"
Deo pursed his lips a moment. "I believe those two are wizards," he finally said.
Radstac watched the shock ripple through the band. Fearful faces turned toward one another. It was comical— and so typical of these Isthmusers. This was still a young land, and these were young peoples, with juvenile cultures. They were unsettled by fears that adults learned to manage.
Protesting voices were rising, some quivering. Anzal silenced everyone harshly, clouting the archer—Frog— who had lost his smirk the instant Deo had said wizards.
"Actually," Deo continued, unperturbed by the hub-bub, "it's one of those wizards I want to talk to." Again he allowed a glimpse of his smile. He owned these bandits. They were bought and paid for, and what he said stood.
Radstac saw that realization reach the entire group. Comical indeed. But she didn't laugh. Instead she set about explaining how they could take the camp.
THEY HAD TO kill one to prove they were serious. Likely they'd have to kill all these Felk in the end, Radstac figured. What were they going to do—take prisoners?
The bandits prowled silently into their positions, ringing the little clearing. None of the Felk had a weapon in hand. A crossbow leaned against a tumbled log, but no one was near it. Frog shot an arrow into the embers of the cooking fire, sending up a cloud of sparks.
"Surrender yourselves—now!" Radstac called. She was behind a thick tree trunk, observing the camp through one eye.
For soldiers—for Felk soldiers, who had supposedly conquered the north half of this Isthmus—they did not respond professionally. The four in uniforms and the two robed figures all leaped to their feet, looking desperately around, seeing nothing but the surrounding woods. No one even seemed to know from which direction the arrow had come.
Radstac called again for their surrender. This gave one of the soldiers the idea of grabbing up his sword and chopping it through the air.
"Come and fight us, you dogs!"
It was the sort of heroic drivel Radstac had heard on many battlefields i
n her time. It was most often cried out by simpletons who had never before lifted a blade against an enemy, but who had heard exotic tales of war all their lives.
And like many of those, these were the last words ever said by the Felk soldier. Frog was as well camouflaged among the trees as the rest of the band, but he had taken up a blind that gave him clear sight lines into the camp. He put a shaft into the soldier's face. Radstac knew how taut the lad could draw that bow, and the force of the blow lifted the soldier off his feet. Blood sprayed. The sword thumped the ground.
Most persuasively of all, it took a long, grueling moment for the man to die, and he was not quiet about it. His fellow Felk agreed to surrender the next time Radstac called for it.
The bandits took the camp.
Deo asked questions, first of the soldiers. They replied readily. Yes, they were scouting ahead of the main body of the army. Yes, Trael was the next target of the Felk, so far as they knew. The city-state possessed no adequate defenses that they had observed. It would fall.
The bandits helped themselves to what rations they found. They divvied up the Felk weapons, eyeing the blades critically, debating the virtues of balance and heft. Deo confiscated the crossbow for himself
When Deo motioned for the two wizards to be brought forward, the bandits quieted. They were uneasy about the two robed specters in their midst, despite the fact that they wore perfectly ordinary faces .and had the same number of limbs as everyone else present. Even the Felk soldiers, remarkably enough, appeared to share in the uneasiness.
Radstac remained at Deo's side. The wizards' hands were bound, but she didn't know how well this would hinder their powers—if at all. Though magic was practiced and relatively accepted on the Southern Continent, she had never actually encountered a practitioner. They tended to live remote, cloistered lives.
One of the robed figures was male, the other female. Both looked very frightened. Deo studied the pair, intrigued. Not wary and apprehensive like the bandits.
After a time he said, "You serve the Felk. Why?"
The female blinked and said, "We are Felk."
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