by Damien Lake
Galemar’s army was content with running patrols between its various outposts established along the Tullainian border, only sending scouts across as far as the first few towns. Whatever the opposition’s nature, they were determined to meet it at the kingdom’s dividing line and force it back, be they fleeing refugees or organized military forces. Only the border barons decided it was worthwhile to send scouts as far in-kingdom as possible, to the very conflict could they manage it.
Lysendra’s man had been two days across the border when he encountered a swarm of panicked Tullainians large enough to populate several sizable towns. Most devoted their entire efforts to their goal of reaching the border. The few willing to talk to the foreigner told only of their home’s destruction.
“They said he raced the refugees back to the border,” recounted one of Riley’s men to Marik and Dietrik. “Must have scared him white to run back so hard.”
“I don’t like this,” Marik replied. “That sounds like too many fleeing people to be this close to the border. Why didn’t they settle into one of the other towns they ran through?”
The man lifted his shoulders. “Folks been jumping across into Galemar all winter.”
“Not like this,” Dietrik objected. “Families and survivors, true, but never an entire township before. Or am I mistaken?”
“No, not so far as I know.” He caressed his sword hilt dangling from his belt. “Though I reckon whatever’s going to happen will happen soon. I hope we’re ready.”
Marik gazed into the distance as the guard sank deeper into his thoughts. These were the first men Marik had served beside under contract who genuinely welcomed the mercenary fighters. Life on the border, even a neutral one, was a crucible that hardened the men tasked with keeping the peace. Their proximity and personal concern regarding events in nearby Tullainia made them wary…perhaps too wary.
Still, Marik would rather have an ally who overestimated his opponent than the soldiers manning the Eighteenth Outpost. Located in Lysendra’s barony and due west of where the Southern Road petered-out, they had yet to impress Marik with their appraisal of the situation. They patrolled in far larger groups than the Ninth Squad and Riley’s forces combined, were effective at rounding up stray Tullainians and proved capable at managing their section of the border. But his few times in their encampment left Marik with the firm impressions that the soldiers were unprepared for a new war.
Conversations always centered on Nolier, and when they would be returning to fend off blue-uniformed soldiers again. No one believed their neighbors would lick their wounds and accept that defeat was their justified reward for land theft. Every army soldier Marik overheard apparently thought the knight-marshal had leapt without looking, assigning far too great a portion of the armed forces to deal with a relatively minor immigration control problem.
Whether or not the troubles ever crossed the border, Marik wished the so-called ‘professional’ fighters would devote their attention to what transpired around them, rather than on possible problems several hundred miles distant.
“Why are we marching north, then? Shouldn’t we stay in our own barony to look after the villages under Atcheron’s responsibilities?” Marik had directed the question at the guard who still looked lost in his own contemplation. The response came from behind.
“I should think that would be obvious! If a tide of people are headed for our border, then they will hardly storm over the Stoneseams! They will flow around the northern range. Lysendra obviously asked his brother baron for aid in meeting the onslaught, now that it appears clear where the disturbance will strike.”
Marik twisted his head back to see if Arvallar were mocking or serious. As usual, simply studying the man’s features leant no insights. Arvallar’s scornful view of the world made his serious observations as abrasive as his sarcasm. “What onslaught? We didn’t come to mow down Tullainians!”
“I don’t believe the Tullainians are the primary concern,” Dietrik mused, “so much as what may be driving them from behind.”
Arvallar cocked his usual half-smirk. It combined dripping amusement with a hard edge. Of all the men in the Fourth Unit, he appreciated Dietrik most. Marik thought that was mostly because Dietrik shared the same weapon type, a mark which Arvallar judged fighters by. “And whatever might be driving so large a number as the scout claims to have encountered would be of great concern, seeing as it looks to be coming on hard.”
“Then Lysendra should have sent his runner to the outpost!” Marik declared. “We only add two-hundred-fifty swords, roughly!”
“How do you know he didn’t?” Arvallar countered. “I hardly think he would be so foolish as to not call on every ally he could, don’t you?” His tone clearly expressed his opinion that Marik would be that foolish, as revealed by his thoughtless remark.
“Well…we’ll be passing the outpost this afternoon, and then we’ll see, won’t we?” Arvallar’s smirk persisted as he drifted to the side where Floroes walked in his usual silent bubble. Colbey stalked along nearby like a hunting panther. Marik felt his cheeks redden. In truth, he thought Arvallar correct, but the man’s superior attitude naturally evoked in Marik a stubborn refusal to ever admit an error.
Dietrik glanced sidelong at him, probably aware of what he thought. Most of his encounters with Arvallar ended like this.
They walked along a hard dirt road unnamed on any map. The locals referred to it as Seambase Road, though the mountains it paralleled were a good eight or nine miles west. Riley rode to the rear once every half-mark to ensure everyone kept apace. Glynn, the only man mounted besides Atcheron and Riley, a fact that had drawn several muttered comments, automatically rode to the head beside the baron.
The baron’s guards mingled with the mercenaries, neither keeping separate nor forcing the Crimson Kings to view their backs. Riley treated them as any of his own, including Marik and Dietrik. They had both wondered if they would be treated with greater respect than the others, owing to their previous experience with the captain, yet Riley apparently saw them as merely two men among many. Their battle on the rain-soaked Southern Road had earned them no special draw with the captain.
All it had earned them, they were both positive, was the assignment itself. No doubt Riley had told Torrance who he’d traveled with as well as what had happened. The commander must have kept that in mind when deciding where to post each squad. Marik thought he was beginning to understand how Torrance made particular decisions.
Sunlight reflected off the snow with brighter incandescence after midmorning. The cloud cover thinned, the last edge blowing away eastward. All through the short column men withdrew their sheer veils. Older veterans had packed such before leaving Kingshome. Marik, along with dozens of others he had noted with relief, were forced to purchase theirs shortly after crossing the Spine.
He kept the material tight to prevent it from bunching together, then tied it around his head in a blindfold. Thin enough to see through, it blocked most of the blinding light. An expert after so many days, he no longer needed to readjust it after setting his half-helm back into place.
Cork could be heard rambling a short distance away, expounding on some new foolishness. The few words Marik caught suggested he spoke of his fishing village hometown. Nonsense about mixing fish oil with soot, then painting a thick line with it under your eyes. He held his tongue, as he had long since decided to do whenever Cork went on like this, though this time the outrageousness of it was far too obvious! How could a black line under your eyes reduce the sun’s glare? Probably Cork just made it up. If he wanted to paint his face like a woman, Marik would leave him to it in peace.
Three marks after noon proper, the march came to the Eighteenth Outpost. Marik thought he might be able to laugh in Arvallar’s face until Dietrik hastily pointed out the man in Lysendra’s livery before he could. At times Dietrik knew far more than he should.
They had no plans to stop so the men merely studied the outpost while they passed. Composed of tent row
s that comprised the soldiers’ sleeping quarters, larger supply tents and field command posts as well as a dozen awning-roofed pavilions, the activity within hardly suggested a detail readying for march. The patrolling units would be out at their duties. Off-duty men went about the outpost in their usual manner.
Outside the largest tent where the officers held their strategy and daily meetings, Lysendra’s messenger waited in a field chair. Most of the small wooden frame vanished beneath the woolen blanket draped across his shoulders. His baron’s device could barely be made out between the blanket edges when he hunched over, a tribute to Dietrik’s eyes that he had been able to distinguish the crest at all.
“Why in the hells are they sitting on their arses if Lysendra’s messenger has already told them what’s in the wind?” A quick glance around assured Marik that Arvallar had wandered to a different place in the column.
“I am sure the officers share many of the same opinions as their men. Given what we heard, I assume they could not care less what happens in Tullainia as long as it stays in Tullainia.” Dietrik shrugged. “A shortsighted view, in my humble opinion, but they have enough on their plates without hungering for seconds.”
“Do you think they actually believe it’s that simple? Don’t they give any credence to the stories coming out of Tullainia at all?”
“Half the men in our own squad choose to believe them fairy tales spun by opportunists hoping to con sympathetic coins from the gullible. Why should the army officers think any differently?”
Marik could hardly believe it, in dull amazement that men trusted with the lives of entire squadrons could be so obstinate in their views. “I’ve been enjoying the leisure so far on this contract but I never fooled myself into thinking is would always be walking from one patrol point to the next. Surely the army has managed to gather some intelligence on whoever is stirring the trouble-pot over there!”
“In all likelihood,” Dietrik continued, “they have. But from my own experience in the army, I will tell you how it has probably been handled. Any information brought back goes straight to the top officers, who pass it to analysts whose job it is to make sense of it. Then it goes back to the officers, who wrangle over it, then they spend session after session arguing about the best method to proceed. Decisions are slow, everyone has their own ideas about what the next best step should be, and when orders do finally emerge, they are usually only simple instructions to move forces here or there.”
Marik nodded, thinking how much that sounded like the few officers he had come into contact with. Most had been young nobles given temporary military ranks, yet to work with the existing officers, they must have had at least a few similarities. “And I bet further information comes in during all this and starts it all over.”
“Not quite that easy. New information is sent to the analysts, to be sure, but in addition to the original task of developing the intelligence, they must also make it mesh with the previous information. If they can’t, then that means they must have misinterpreted the original information, or the new information, so they must start from scratch with both.”
“Ugh,” Marik groaned. “I can see why you left the army, wanting to get away from all that.”
“Oh, it is not that simple, or difficult. I think the army tends to overcomplicate it, but no doubt Torrance and the clerks must go through similar processes when they consider each contract proposal.”
That cast a shadow across Marik’s view of mercenaries versus the kingdom army. He liked how the band was direct and cut to the chase, unlike the army. Perhaps it was not quite so simple after all.
Atcheron meant to reach Lysendra by nightfall. Baron Lysendra had four towns under his rule, the southernmost sitting four miles north of the outpost. Though the Stoneseams’ last true peaks were twenty miles further beyond, there were two wide gaps in Lysendra’s territory that could be easily used as passes through the mountains. The scout must have crossed back through one yesterday.
They had been to the small town before, named Armonsfield, as well as further on to Lysendra’s holding outside Elmsmeadow. Armonsfield lay much closer to the mountains than either baron’s manor. Lysendra must have relocated since last the Ninth had come this way, concerned about the passes. The column arrived in good time with a full candlemark remaining before dusk.
Over a mile away rose the Stoneseams Mountains with nothing in the way of a gradual rise. Atcheron’s force arrived in time to see Lysendra’s men running west toward the first pass. They were quite a distance off and too far to hail. Everyone looked to the mountains.
They could see, boiling over the slope’s horizon, a writhing jumble of motion. The pass’s surface underwent an upheaval as if the gods’ own gardener were running a massive, invisible plow between the steep walls. Brown and black churned upward through the solid white snow. But it was not the ground uprooting itself in a furious turmoil.
People, by the hundreds, by the thousands, broke over the pass’s crest in a riotous tide.
Chapter 30
Atcheron ordered full speed. Riley echoed the command in a bellow heard by all. Marik cursed. He had hoped the baron would decided to proceed into Armonsfield and learn what they could from whatever men Lysendra had left stationed there before running headlong into unknown trouble. It would have allowed the men to rest after the miles on their feet, and more importantly, to Marik, it would have afforded the chance for him to drift through the etheric, seeing what he could. No matter how hard he pushed himself, he’d never duplicated his feat of drifting while physically moving, as on the night of Hilliard’s near assassination.
With probable trouble before them, the column reorganized under Riley’s orders. The guards hustled forward to form their customary twin rows of double-file. Each Crimson Kings unit gathered with its sergeant in the lead, Fraser leading the First in addition to Kineta. Sloan led the Fourth Unit in the rearmost position.
Dietrik enjoyed this development as little as he. “This is madness. We have perhaps a mark of true light left, and a quarter-mark of light that will be fading fast before our eyes!”
“I know. I think Atcheron is leaping before he—hey!” Marik glared at Colbey, who had jostled him rudely sideways by pushing forward to walk between him and Dietrik.
The scout’s eyes were alight in the evening illumination. For the first time in Marik’s memory, he looked eager, nearly excited. His fingers endlessly clasped and released his sword hilt while his features resembled a hunting forest cat more than ever. “Are you ready for a fight, mage?”
Marik replied cautiously. “If there is a fight to be fought, I am ready for it.”
Colbey cast a speculative look over him. Marik felt his worth being weighed on a scale slightly different from Colbey’s usual. What that difference might be, Marik struggled to determine.
“You think you are ready for what is to come. You will learn soon enough.” The scout directed his gaze to the mountains, locked on the pass, leaving Marik to stew.
That was vintage Colbey, at least. Never a single lesson passed where he missed an opportunity to scorn Marik’s abilities, proclaiming his student unknowledgeable and foundering in a sea of delusion.
Well, his swordsmanship had improved dramatically, both under Colbey’s eye and over the last summer. That he could fend off Colbey during their latest training sessions only proved it!
They walked in the snow path plowed by Lysendra’s men and arrived at the slope’s base as the first Tullainians reached bottom. Marik’s hand automatically clutched at the hilt protruding over his shoulder. The refugees they encountered before had been haggard, starving and haunted.
These were a wild-eyed cattle herd in the midst of a stampede.
Lysendra could be seen with his men, pushed to one side. With only two-hundred guardsmen there was no hope he could stem the flow, nor even direct the Tullainians to either return to their homeland or to the Southern Road. His men shouted as he did, hoping to garner attention.
Riley q
uickly brought the column to the northern side of the slope before the first terrified runner reached them. The mob saw nothing at all. They kept running the moment they reached the flatter ground, stumbling or wobbling every third step through the drifts, caring for nothing except reaching the opposite horizon.
Marik stood with his shieldmates, eyes widened, hardly able to believe what he saw. Here and there, people fell, immediately crushed by those behind who never noticed their plight, or did not care for anyone else’s skin but their own. Panic whipped them mercilessly, a cruel driver bent on running his horses to death.
Their noise reminded Marik of the tournament crowds, but the din there had been born of cheer and exuberance and good times had by all. The differences were acute. Marik could feel his spine shiver while he listened. Mixed in with the mindless yelling came the pained shriek of a woman being trampled to death, a child wailing in fear, a man selling his soul for deliverance to whatever god would listen to his plea.
“Bloody hells,” Edwin muttered, or so it sounded. The archer must have said it fairly loud for Marik to hear it at all.
Most bizarre of all, mixed into the swarming mob were countless animals. A few head of cattle, brought with the fleeing people from their homes, yet mostly herds of deer and other wild beasts. All ran side-by-side with the Tullainians, as hell-bent on escaping the vicinity, rubbing shoulders with men without apparent care. White and brown fur flashed from around pumping legs, revealing foxes and squirrels that miraculously avoided death from pounding feet. Marik stared, dumbfounded. What could possibly induce such insanity?
Only Colbey seemed unaffected by the furor. He peered on it as he did on every sparring match Marik had noticed him watching, or as he did on the peddlers who hawked their wares by the roadside. The scout was a cold storm that cared little for those who froze to death in the midst of his icy blows.
