We had gone about another hundred yards before Genna appeared out of the gloom again from the east. This time she didn’t melt out of the forest, she leapt out at a dead run with a few daggers missing from her bandoleer. I didn’t see anyone behind her, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t coming.
No one behind her …
I turned to the west and saw them coming, a patrol of ten who had likely just sat and waited on their own initiative. Guessing we were moving south, they had lain low and waited for us to come to them.
I whipped out my sword and turned Blizzard to meet them, Nantar and Thorn behind me. The rest held back with the horses. In moments I heard the whip-whop of arrows flying through the air from behind us, and saw three of the advancing men fall. They didn’t have dogs. They wore green cloaks and brown leather armor, and carried short, fighting swords, double edged and pointed at the ends. Tight leather caps, giving them a compact appearance, protected their heads.
No bows. Why would they have no bows?
I reined Blizzard in hard, the big horse skidding through the undergrowth, almost falling to his knees. Decayed leaves and soft earth flew from his hooves. Nantar and Thorn almost crashed into me, swearing angrily, not understanding what I could be thinking. I looked up for a moment and caught Thorn’s eyes.
“Archers,” I whispered hoarsely. Then I had to pay attention to my slipping mount, trying to get him back on his feet and turned around.
The first arrow glanced from my armored shoulder. The second rang from Thorn’s helmet and another stopped dead on Nantar’s breastplate. The Confluni soldiers were closing and the three of us were regaining control of our mounts. I could see Arath, Drekk and Genna with their arrows pointed to the trees, now. There were more men coming up from behind them, having followed Genna after all. We were caught in a pincer with arrow-cover bringing us into a tight knot for them to fight. We weren’t going to win.
Dammit! I swore in my head. I had come too far for this! It was entirely unacceptable to me to die this way, for some ambiguous goal with no one to blame but myself for not speaking up.
Well, the archers probably wouldn’t shoot their own men. Arath, Drekk and Genna would have to hold ten men with their arrow fire or their swords until we could get turned around.
“To me!” I shouted. Nantar and Thorn looked at me in surprise. I didn’t wait for their approval as I sped forward and engaged the seven remaining from the west. I only hoped that they would follow.
As I had done before, I used Blizzard’s great size to my advantage, running down one of the men as my sword slashed the throat of another. Blizzard’s strength lay in his speed on this mission, so his barding had been left on the ship. This left me worrying about exposing him to an armed man. On my left side, I felt a sword clang from my shin-guard. I heard another grunt from that side and knew that at least one of the team had followed me.
Having run through their numbers, I brought Blizzard between two trees and around for another pass. Nantar had come with me, Thorn having gone back to help fight against the greater numbers. Arrows clanged from his armor, catching in the chinks between the heavy plates. A Confluni rose up before me, sword in hand, and made the mistake of spooking Blizzard, who reared and crushed his skull with a huge hoof. He crashed back to the ground and I saw Nantar twenty feet from me, fighting one man on each side of his mount, his sword moving faster than the eye could follow, back and forth across his horse’s mane.
I charged over to him, ducking trees, looking for more men to fight. There were none, between the arrows and Nantar and I there were just these two left. Nantar finally drove the point of his heavy sword into one of the two men’s eye socket, and I took the other from behind as I passed.
Nantar looked up at me in surprise, then grinned through his beard. Together we looked back at our comrades and saw them ringed with men on foot. D’gattis had his sword out, blood running from a shoulder wound down to his hand. Ancenon, his horse down, parried two men at once while Genna put her back to his. She fought two men with one of her daggers in each hand, her crossbow at her feet. Drekk had fallen to one knee, and with a man pressing him. Thorn had a dead man at his feet and had just finished off another.
Arath engaged one man, his sword dancing in the air as if alive. I saw no men on the ground; still there were only nine. I assumed then that Genna’s missing daggers hadn’t been wasted.
We charged together, Nantar and I. I had an urge to give a battle cry, but I suppressed it. Finally our horses brought us through the trees to where we needed to be, and we dismounted as one, the fighting too close for horseback. I charged in and immediately plunged my sword into the kidneys of the man fighting Drekk. The Confluni fell on the Uman. I turned in time to catch one of Genna’s men as his blade swept down toward my shin. Our swords rang once, then again, and then a third time before I could feint for his leg and punch him in the face with an armored fist. He stepped back and I finished him, my sword piercing his leather breastplate and then his heart.
Nantar had come to D’gattis’ aid, killing the man who had pressed him. D’gattis stood back now, his face a mask of concentration while blood flowed free from his shoulder. Almost simultaneously, Genna finished her man with a slash across his throat, Ancenon cut the head from one of his opponents, having felled the other, and Arath disarmed his man and held him still, a sword to his jugular. As fast as it had started, it ended.
Except for the archers.
I turned and knelt to make myself a smaller target just as D’gattis clapped his hands together and spoke a single word. I don’t know what that word was but it ran through me like a shock wave. I heard Nantar grunt and Thorn swear as well. In front of me another patrol of Confluni, ten strong, dropped as one from the trees, landing limp, their faces twisted in pain.
I listened for more but there were none. I stood and shook the blood from my sword, leaving it clean. It coated me up to the elbow, splashed on the lower leg and hip as well, some of it mine. The man on the ground had gotten me.
I looked over at Blizzard and saw that he too had taken a few wounds. I stepped over to the big stallion, standing still, tongue lolling, and saw that the white hide, stained green, had been parted at the shoulder and the rib cage. He would need a few stitches but wouldn’t die on me.
The rest were another case. Drekk had a serious shoulder wound, D’gattis as well. Nantar was unscathed, Thorn nicked by a few of the many arrows that had rained down on him, but Genna had scratches from head to toe from her run through the underbrush and her fight right after. Arath’s man tried to bolt and the woodsman had to drop him, which was a shame. Ancenon knelt down beside where Drekk lay, put his hands on him, and closed his eyes.
After a moment of silence and a ringing in my ears, similar to music, light seemed to shine through the Prince’s hands as they lay upon Drekk. The Uman stirred, moaned and then lay still, sighing.
Thorn hissed, “We need to ride, and you incapacitated him.” Ancenon looked up.
My insides felt like ashes after the experience. I had never killed so many in so short a time. I remembered all of the looks I had seen; the dying men, the sick feel of parting their flesh with my steel Sword of War.
At least none asked for War’s Wages afterward.
“He would have died,” Ancenon insisted.
“If we have to leave him, he’s dead anyway.”
I looked into other faces, concerned over this latest spat. Nantar absently wiped blood from his armor so that there would be no permanent stain in the metal. D’gattis placed a hand on his own shoulder and performed a lesser version of what I had seen Ancenon do for Drekk. When he finished, even the fabric of his robe had healed.
After all of the other things I had seen, the fact that they could use their “magic” to heal each other struck me as less of a surprise. In my heart I knew that there had to be some explanation for it, but in light of being kidnapped by a foreign god to another reality, holding an invincible sword and riding an impossib
ly huge horse, I didn’t need to go looking for it.
“We’ll tie him across his horse,” Arath said, wiping his sword clean with a rag. “I’ll lead it. You take the point, Thorn. D’gattis will ride with you.”
“Me?” the Uman-Chi seemed almost insulted.
“You have the map,” Thorn said.
“It isn’t a map,” Genna threw in. She tightened her leathers while I just appreciated the view. Genna’s beauty had no trouble shining through blood and scratches. The perfect curve of her behind distracted me from my reverie. It’s funny how a girl can do that.
Ancenon and D’gattis looked up immediately. D’gattis narrowed his eyes. “And how would you know?” he asked.
She smiled from where she knelt, trussing up her shin-guard. “I looked.”
“And who said you could do that?” Ancenon asked, scowling, his eyebrows lowered over his ambiguous silver eyes.
“No one,” she said. “But I know it is a key, not a map.”
We all looked at Ancenon and D’gattis, save for Drekk, who had been tied across his horse and Arath, who had tied him. Our enemy dead lay where they were slain, uncared for and of no concern.
Ancenon sighed. “Close enough – we both need to be near it. Thorn can take the point, D’gattis and I right behind him. Then Lupus and Nantar, then Arath at rear guard. Genna, we are going to go straight south, now. No more skipping around.”
“Then I hope you like this sort of fighting, because they will be right on our trail,” I said. All eyes turned to me, even Arath’s.
I had heard enough of this. I didn’t care if, together, we were competent to take on the entire Confluni army. I didn’t want their blood on my hands.
“We are close enough now where the safest place is Outpost X,” D’gattis argued.
“We are that close to Outpost X?” Genna asked.
D’gattis held up the thing which I, too, had mistaken for a map. It had writing on it, but looked more like lines of words with a decorated border. It looked like any other piece of paper to me. Already, my attention turned from the devastation of the battlefield.
Thirty men! How many had I killed? I was losing track. That didn’t seem right somehow.
“To all of you, this should look like a normal piece of parchment,” D’gattis said, holding it up for us to see. Indeed, it did look like just that. “To an Uman-Chi, however,” he continued, handing it to Ancenon, “it is a Cheyak relic, a portion of our heritage and, according to what it says on it, penned in Outpost X.”
“And it tells how to get there?” Thorn asked.
“No,” D’gattis corrected him. “It doesn’t say much of anything. But it has touched the very stones of the walls and floors of Outpost X.”
“And that gives it resonance,” I said. Heads turned back to me.
“You know of specific item resonance?” Ancenon asked me. Even with his silver eyes, he seemed incredulous.
Actually, it surprised me more that they knew about it. It has to do with the theory of Brownian Motion, the micro-movements inherent in all molecules. The theory is that nothing is really at rest – everything moves constantly at the molecular level. If it moves, it should therefore move with a pattern. Resonance is the property where the patterns of motions of one piece of material are transferred to another material by contact. This lets a geologist, for example, place a tuning fork on a piece of rock and learn of its internal structure.
“You believe that there are frequencies of motion inherent in that parchment which are inherent in Outpost X, and you have derived some way to seek out that specific motion,” I said.
For my world’s science: impossible. Here? Who knows?
D’gattis looked at Ancenon and Ancenon at D’gattis. Then both looked at me.
“Um, yes, that is absolutely correct,” D’gattis said, still disbelieving. “But it takes two of us – because when one of us handles the parchment – “
“You affect the resonance.”
Another pause. “Yes,” said Ancenon.
“But when two share the parchment, one can cancel the resonance of the other, by reading the other person and applying the inverse of his resonant frequency. Thus, where one would eventually change the resonance of the parchment, two are keeping the original frequencies pure.”
The rest looked at me as if I came from outer space. Well, guess what, guys? I do! Ancenon and D’gattis just nodded.
“Can I see that for a moment, please,” I said.
D’gattis looked at Ancenon, who nodded. With a trembling hand, he took the parchment from Ancenon and handed it to me. It felt like old skin in my hand. I looked at the writing, nothing but a series of squiggles to my eyes.
I waited for the language barrier to break down, as it had with every language that I had encountered so far. I placed my hand on my sword, still nothing. Finally, I whispered, “War.”
That did it. The squiggles seemed to move before my eyes, to make sense, to speak to me. Then it felt as if the insides of my brain were being rearranged; my knees gave and Thorn, of all people, took my elbow to steady me. I shook my head and looked back at the parchment, blurred to my vision.
“Well?” D’gattis said.
I read aloud,
“write these words as the end approaches. So severe is the wrath of Power, our god, as to his defeat at the hands of Law and Order, that he has smitten Earth in vengeance and, in so doing, cracked the land. I fear that the water from the Forgotten Sea will overcome the Passes of Deception, destroying our plains and bringing to an end this noble land.
Such is the penance a people must face with the fall of their god. I accept it willingly. There will be degeneration and a Dark Age. War will walk the land. Our slaves, the Uman-Chi and their servants, the Confluni, I do charge to stand up where we have fallen and to change the face of”
“You, um, read Cheyak,” D’gattis said.
“Guess so,” I said.
“We really need to go, people,” Genna said. I tended to agree. We could have a lot of time for revelation and reflection in a Confluni jail cell. I could think of better ways to spend my days.
D’gattis took the parchment from me and then looked into my eyes. The silver orbs were expressionless. Then he looked at the parchment again. I guessed that he had to remove my resonant frequency from it.
It took me a few more moments to stitch Blizzard’s side with a strand from his own tail. Thorn held his head and talked to him to calm him while I sewed. I did the same for his mount, which had taken a scrape from an arrow. Genna went back on patrol and Arath doused some conspicuously left-behind items with our wintergreen extract and then commenced working on some false trails. We spent fifteen more minutes before we remounted, and then Genna was back.
“Another patrol, moving this way,” she said.
“Damn, so many,” Thorn whispered hoarsely. I agreed. This must be extremely expensive for the Confluni government, and for what? To keep trappers and prospectors out of their country? What were they hiding that made this economically sound?
“Ancenon and I agree,” said D’gattis, holding the parchment, “that we are six to ten miles north of where we want to be.”
We had lost two horses. Ancenon and Drekk were on two of our packhorses, leaving us one spare. I lifted Genna up with one arm and sat her behind me. “I guess this is the boring part, hun’,” I told her, as she wrapped her arms around my waist. Thorn kicked his horse into motion, and the rest of us followed behind him in proscribed order. We moved south at the fastest gallop we dared through the woods.
As a plains horse, Blizzard didn’t like ducking trees. Genna and I bounced and were scuffed and yes, I admit, I took hold of the saddle horn from time to time. Good thing for his strength, he bore the heaviest burden of all of the horses. The armor I wore so lightly was all dead weight to him, and now Genna had been added. Arath would stop from time to time behind us and create a false trail or spray a little more of our evergreen extract. His mount seemed used to nego
tiating through a forest and Arath no less so. As it turned out, Nantar led Drekk’s mount ahead of me.
We heard pursuit behind us. Odds were they didn’t need the dogs or the trackers, they could hear the horses’ hooves pound and our armor clank. We weren’t being discreet anymore, but counting on greater speed to buy us time. Personally I anticipated the patrol that we would eventually overtake to surprise us more than I feared the patrols we left behind.
We went a half-hour by my best estimate before Ancenon called a halt. He and D’gattis were smiling like kids on Christmas. I could feel Blizzard miss a step as he tired. The proud stallion had been ridden hard, and would work harder if his stitches should tear.
I didn’t see anything resembling what I had seen in Outpost X. The trees were a little younger, the foliage a little thicker. One went hand in hand with the other, the younger trees letting through more light. Arath ran his horse back along our trail, and Genna followed after him on foot, both without saying anything.
“We are here,” D’gattis said.
“Then we’re doomed,” Thorn complained. “I had hoped for some walls to stand behind, Ancenon. They will rip us apart if they catch us in the open like this.”
“Did Outpost X have some sort of invisibility or mystical power?” Nantar asked. I was wondering the same thing.
“No, not according to what we know of the Cheyak and their outposts of that time. Outpost X was the same as any other outpost.”
“But Outpost VII is almost nothing like Outpost IX,” Thorn argued. “There doesn’t appear to be a standard – “
“Outpost VII was nearly ruined by the Blast,” Ancenon said, his mind still mostly focused on the scroll. “When the waters rushed in past the Straights of Deception there was flooding from a tidal wave. Outpost VII took the brunt of these, allowing Outpost IX to continue on, unscathed.”
“So what is so special about Outpost X?” I asked. I thought it was about time someone asked that question.
Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) Page 20
