by Robert Brady
I let them chase me for two days, into the middle of the last week of War, until I encountered the troops I’d sent for.
Shela had left Lee in Medya, because Shela couldn’t stand the idea of Lee’s life being risked again. Better to have a calm Shela than Lee here, so I left her, but I put her to work, and she rallied not just the extra Wolf Soldiers that I needed, but some archery cover as well.
Normally that would be the Aschire, but this time it was the Scitai, from the Silent Isle.
In order to do that, we had to move fast. Lee ordered our Sea Wolves simply to put into the Scitai-controlled beaches of the Silent Isle while others held the Trenboni Tech Ships at arm’s length.
I felt less bad about that slap in the face to the Uman-Chi, having spoken to Dilvesh. Of course, then there was the problem of getting the Scitai to help us, especially considering this was done without Karel of Stone.
Lee, however, went there herself, with a story of their long-lost, Confluni cousins, whom she’d spoken to personally. With promises not only of more information about them, but perhaps taking them to meet these lost cousins personally, Lee gathered 500 volunteers.
To Shela’s horror, Lee came north with them personally. Marching south, we topped a rise and found two Millennia of Wolf Soldiers quick-marching toward us, a band of Scitai between them, and Lee on horseback, leading them all.
Without a look at me, Shela put heels to her horse and galloped to her errant daughter’s side.
To my west, I could see the dust of an approaching army – hopefully Eric. I sent riders to make sure.
I called a halt and started the jess doonari. Grainger and Varr split off from me and gave the orders. An old friend rode out from the Wolf Soldiers to meet me.
“J’her,” I shouted, when I recognized him. I rode out on the new horse and met him. From horseback, we took each other’s’ wrists in hand.
“Blizzard?” he asked, looking at mount.
“It was time for him to retire safely,” I told the Supreme Commander of the Wolf Soldiers. “But we’re telling anyone else that we lost him to colick.”
J’her nodded. “I decided that you couldn’t win this without me,” he said.
I smiled. “Good of you to show up, then,” I said. “I’m guessing that M’den is getting along with Tartan Stowe in Galnesh Eldador, then?”
“Ha!” J’her laughed. “No, but that’s for them to work out. He’s getting along very well with Hectaro, though. It’s about time we had a Duke with Wolf Soldier training. Hectaro kept the Princess alive in Conflu – everyone respects him.”
I nodded. Lee had skills in management we hadn’t dreamed of yet.
I could hear Shela and Lee arguing as they approached. Shela wanted Lee to turn herself around now, and Lee had no intention of doing it. J’her looked over his shoulder and then back at me.
“I told her that would happen,” the Uman said.
“I’m surprised she didn’t listen to you,” I commented.
J’her shook his head. “I’m not ‘Unca Chair,’ anymore, Lupus,” he said. “She’s a woman, and she’s got a woman’s iron in her. You can’t tell the Princess who strode the plains and mountains of Conflu that she has to stay home, while her younger brother swings a sword on the battlefield.”
I nodded. “Station our warriors to the east of the Regulars,” I ordered him. “Take charge and work with Vulpe, and Eric when he shows up. Keep those Scitai out of sight. The Uman-Chi are working with the Great North – if they get one look at the Scitai, they’ll know exactly what we plan to do.”
“We have 5,000 more spears, as ordered,” J’her said. I nodded.
“Get them to General Grainger,” I said, and kicked my stallion toward Shela and Lee.
“You will return to Medya,” Shela ordered Lee. Lee’s lips were pressed in a thin line, riding her beloved mare, ‘Singer.’ She wouldn’t look at her mother and she wouldn’t answer.
“She stays,” I told Shela.
Shela turned half way around on her gelding. The hurt in her eyes was plain as she sought mine out.
“No, Shela,” I said. “She’s served her purpose behind the lines. We’re facing the Uman-Chi. It’s all hands on deck.”
She nodded. “Good,” she said. “Put her on a Sea Wolf on the river –“
“No,” I said. “No, Shela, I’m not discussing it, she’s staying with her brothers and sisters.”
“Thank you, father,” Lee said, softly.
“You,” I said, pointing a finger at my eldest daughter, “respect your mother. This is no victory for you. She told you to stay in Medya and you should have done it. You don’t know my plans and, for all you knew, you just set us back by being here.”
She lowered her head.
“You think you’re a woman at 15,” I said. “You point to what your mother was doing at the same age. Your mother grew up on the plains in bare feet, you grew up within twenty feet of 1,000 defenders, in a castle, in slippers. You are not your mother.”
She opened her mouth to tell me that her mother never conquered Conflu single-handedly, I’m sure and I just said, “Shut it. Find Dagi and Chesswaya and tend the troops.”
She lowered her head and she nodded. She kicked her horse and rode off.
Shela rode up next to me, facing me from the back of her horse.
“She believes herself invincible,” Shela told me. “Conflu didn’t conquer her, so she thinks nothing can.”
“Like the woman who blew the gates off of Katarran?” I asked her.
Shela held back a smile.
“And then Outpost IX,” I added. “Tell me you weren’t invincible after you did that to the Uman-Chi.”
Shela couldn’t respond.
“There is a curse among my people,” I told her. “’May your children grow up to be just like you.’ I think you see that in Lee now.”
Shela shook her head. “A dire curse indeed.”
***
We settled in, and the Great North army did the same. It was warm enough where the Scitai didn’t mind staying out of sight, a couple daheer to the south. Chesswaya cast a spell that kept them out of the Uman-Chi’s sight, if they divined for them.
“The Uman-Chi will know we’re hiding something,” Chessa said, “but they won’t know what.”
“They’ll know in an instant if they contact their friends back home,” Lee said. We were all in the pavilion around the map table.
“I had to threaten Eldadorian Fire from the Bitch to keep the Tech Ships back – and these are the new ones, not the old ones we’ve fought before. I can’t think they haven’t done something to match us in ten years.”
“Can we change the illusion to make the Scitai look like something else?” Dagi asked, looking at Chesswaya.
Chesswaya frowned. “I think they would believe that we had Theran Lancers to the south,” she said. “I’ve seen them before. It shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Unless they’ve looked once already, and seen nothing,” Shela said. “You’ll have to make it look like the spell failed. I’ll teach you.”
The two of them went to the side of the pavilion. Eric and Nantar were at one end of the table, and Nantar pointed to the map.
“I think the Uman-Chi,” the Scarlet Warrior said, “will be at the center of the horde. They’ll feel the safest there, knowing that they can transport out and to the safety of the Silent Isle if they feel threatened.”
“We could block that,” Raven said. “I’ve been studying that movement from place to place. They shift into the aether, kind of like old science fiction stories talked about going into hyperspace. In fact, these might be tiny, black holes –“
She looked up and saw all of the blank faces. She looked toward me.
“I think I can stop them from getting to the aether,” she said.
Vedeen shook her head. “The aether is everywhere and nowhere,” she said. “You cannot throw a net so wide.”
“You told me,” I said, “that whe
n you saved Lee, you couldn’t put her back down safely in Eldador, because there was nowhere close where reality met where she was.”
Vedeen nodded. “That is true…” she said.
Raven said, “We toughen this small part of reality. We make it repellent to the type of connection they need.”
“If the Uman-Chi think they’re trapped her,” Nantar said, “they’ll do everything they can to open that portal, and ignore everything else.”
I agreed. The best way to neutralize the Uman-Chi was to make them think they were trapped. They would sacrifice the entire horde for their own lives.
We were just animals to the Uman-Chi.
We laid out plans into the night. The morning would sun would rise bloody.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Once More, into the Breach
Our troops rose in the dark, to take advantage of the rising sun again.
Wolf Soldiers marshalled 4,000 strong to the East, in their squads of ten.
To the South, 6,000 Eldadorian Regulars marshalled in their long rows and columns.
To the West, 25,000 Volkhydrans growled and clashed their weapons. In fact, the largest portion of our army only existed to protect our supply lines coming from Lupha and Medya, and to provide reserves in case this really went our way.
If the horde from the North picked that front, knowing it to be their best chance at delivering us a serious blow, we’d take them from behind on two fronts and it wouldn’t go well for them. I had to think that they were going to march south and try to leave a reserve to hold off the Wolf Soldiers, who would do them the worst damage, but only at a distance. If the Great North could surge within the range of our spears, then they could meet us man-for-man, and that was their best chance at a win.
As I’d said so many time, good planning for a battle is being able to pick things up when you were into it, and everything went to hell. Vinkler and Maree weren’t going to just walk into what was a pretty obvious trap I’d set for them.
Dawn rose. The horde gathered.
They did nothing.
That was new.
J’her sent me a message after about 20 minutes, “What do you think?”
I sent one back. “I think they’re going to wait us out and make us come to them.”
I said the same to Vulpe and to Eric. “If they want to wait here and stare at us all day, let them.” I had Karel of Stone and a couple of his countrymen trying to locate the enemy supply lines. I’d love to cut those and then see how they liked not-eating.
Lee, Raven, Shela and Chessa were with me, to the north of our pavilion. Here, we could overview the battle and direct my generals. Normally we used child messengers who ran between the troops, however the Uman-Chi knew of them, and it was too obvious a flaw in our infrastructure, so instead we were using the barely gifted to transmit messages between the commands.
“Spell casters,” Shela said to me. Lee and Chessa nodded. Someone was using magic to sniff us out.
Raven stepped forward and raised a hand, white with power, to draw attention to herself. There was a bright flash around her. Dressed like Shela now in Andaron leathers, her brown hair streamed out behind her, and she smiled.
There was something about Raven where, if she were the subject of a spell, the power of that spell was reflected back at the caster. Raven would absorb the other caster’s power, and the other caster would fall asleep, totally drained, until he or she could recover. That could take days.
When we’d battled in the past, Raven’s strategy was to make of herself the most obvious target that she could, and to catch casters unaware. It had worked pretty well.
“Well, they know I’m here, anyway,” Raven said. She’d spent months among the Uman-Chi before coming to Eldador, and the Uman-Chi knew her.
Behind us, on Little Storm, Jack said, “The dust kisses the fallen. A small meal from a buffet.”
That was ominous.
There was movement in the enemy lines. They didn’t like this tactic – they wanted to fight. It could be their undoing right there.
“Send out a dozen horse with archers,” I sent message to Vulpe. “Antagonize the line, then bring them back.”
A dozen horse broke out with Andaron riders in light armor. We used them mostly as scouts, we didn’t have the Theran Lancers or the Angadorian Knights present – both were keeping the peace where they were more effective: on the wide plains of Eldador.
Calling out their battle cries, they fired arrows into the front lines of the horde. Crossbow bolts returned, coming unexpectedly close to the mounted warriors. Normally the crossbow hadn’t nearly the range of a bow, but these were close and the enemy was deadly accurate with them.
One rider took a bolt to the armor and the group retreated. We had other barely gifted who would tend to him.
Now there was surging in the lines. There was a trumpet blast from their center – one short, flat note that I had to think meant, “Stand fast.”
“Order the Wolf Soldiers to start beating our drums,” I sent to J’her. I’d started doing this years ago – a tactic robbed from the Mongols under Kublai Khan. The drums were meant to inspire terror in the target of our marching army. In China and the Steppe, the Mongols would march into nearly-empty cities sometimes, as the residents fled in terror of their reputation.
Here, I just wanted to piss them off. They weren’t terrified of anything we did.
The drums started booming. The Eldadorian Regulars sounded their bugles as well. To the West, the Volkhydrans began to beat their swords with their shields.
A troop of thirty ran out from the horde, toward the Volkhydrans. Eric waited, then ordered them attacked with crossbow bolts before they were close enough to engage.
Then five Volkhydrans walked out, lowered their breeches and pissed in the faces of the fallen.
That was all they could take.
The horde surged toward the Eldadorian Regulars, as expected.
Lightening crashed into their midst as Shela and Vedeen called forth their power, then was quelled by the Uman-Chi.
The Regulars started their march forward, the Scitai marching unseen among them.
When the two armies were within arrow-range, the Eldadorians as one took a knee and raised their shields. 250 deadly-accurate Scitai archers stood and took aim at the enemy.
A frantic blast from Great North buglers, and the horde raised their shields in a shield wall. The Scitai fired head on.
Two hundred and fifty others fired as well, an arcing shot that would meet the enemy from above, not dead-on.
The bulk of the Scitai arrows from the first wave found shields, while those of the second wave took lives. Surprised, the horde raised their shields to meet this new threat, and the first wave fired again.
And then the second, and then the second again when the horde guessed what we were up to, and repositioned their shields for the head-on wave.
They raised their shields and the first wave fired. Then again, and again, and then the second wave.
We hadn’t even engaged and we’d taken close to 1,000 of their warriors by our count.
Then the arrows stopped dead in the air. The bugles blasted from the enemy camp.
The horde stood and began to march.
Except now the ground beneath their feet was soft and muddy and hard to move through – Lee had been at work this entire time with Chesswaya. The horde were slipping and cursing, and the Wolf Soldiers advanced from the East.
The Scitai broke ranks from the Regulars, who started their march again. Their spears were already raised. Shela and Raven were addressing the Uman-Chi defense, but every time they dropped it, another raised it again.
“There must be ten of them,” Shela said. “I think that Raven being here is the only reason they haven’t attacked us directly.”
Oh, god, I thought, that was probably right!
“Raven, get to the Wolf Soldiers,” I said.
She had some sweat on her face – spell casting is
n’t easy.
“If they know you’re here, they’ll hit over there,” I told her.
She smiled and she nodded. She kicked her horse, an Angadorian mare, and raced to the Wolf Soldiers’ lines.
I sent message to J’her, but it was only seconds ahead of the first flaming ball that arced into the First Millennium.
Shela tried to divert it, but she was already occupied with the arrow defense. Two squads were lost and others injured.
The Wolf Soldiers reformed. They were struck again, and again.
Then Raven was there, and she rode her horse right into the path of a ball of fire. The mare reared but was unharmed. A savage red arc flew right back into the midst of the Uman-Chi spell casters, not among the army, but back on a hill overlooking the battle field.
“I have you,” I hissed.
Nantar and his Sarandi, 500 strong, raced on horseback behind the Wolf Soldiers for the hill. Raven joined them.
Lightening dripped from the sky, toward the Sarandi, and then arced back where it came from when Raven encountered it. Now, she blocked their ability to transport out, or try to.
“The arrow defense is gone,” Shela announced.
“Spears!” I ordered Vulpe.
As one, 1,000 spears rose from the ranks of the Regulars, pulled back, and flew toward the enemy, who fought the mud and thought themselves defended.
It took them completely by surprise. We pulled back for another volley.
Three short blasts from the Great North trumpets. Retreat.
Damn! I swore. There were still too many of them to engage directly. The Wolf Soldiers were too far away.
Then another trumpet blast, from the north – one I recognized.
The Free Legionnaires, under Thorn, had arrived. His scouts must have found the battle and directed him. He hadn’t risked letting me know, for fear of tipping off his presence.
We blew the answer blast – Attack!
Now I had them boxed in. The Sarandi would be on the Uman-Chi in minutes, and the Uman-Chi would be hiking up their robes and running for their lives, the Great North forgotten.
