by K V Johansen
“Don’t you dare, boy,” the castellan said. Shrugged at Ahjvar’s questioning look. “Someone has to train the horses for the lords, eh? I wouldn’t ride against him. Or bet against him, in the harvest games.” A slow smile. “Of course, I usually made sure I drew him for my team. Baril always claimed I cheated.”
“You did. But so did I. I didn’t want to ride for Baril.” Ghu tapped him with the spear, flipped it to his other hand, spun it end for end and back again, Snow moving, muscles gathering, leaping like a bird into flight. Pursuit of Ivah, who was away beyond the assembling companies, taking her dappled grey through some rapid turns and changes, a course set only in her mind, dropping arrows into tufts of grass.
An edgy restlessness all round.
Ghu rode her line, brushed each arrow where it stood, Ahjvar thought, but didn’t strike even to damage the fletching. Except the last, which he split and skewered to the earth, wheeling back to reclaim the spear. He did not relinquish it when they rode out.
They made a swift and winding passage around the hills, leaving riverside grasslands for fields where green spears were already beginning to thrust from the furrows. They were seen; men and women out with hoes, children with slings and bullroarers against the plundering birds. Such watchers might come to the ferry before they did; a single runner who knew the paths of the hills . . . maybe. Maybe not. The horses set the pace; the crossbow company and the foot jogged where they could, and the curving path was not always the slower, not when the hills were a steep scramble tree to clinging tree. They ignored the village folk—serfs, slaves, or free tenants of some Dwei manor, they did not ask—and the folk fled them where they could. Where they could not, Lady Ti-So’aro proclaimed the heir of the gods and Prince Dan, riding against those who had invaded Alwu to enforce the tyranny of the empress and put the priests of the shrines to the sword.
“Tell it in the villages,” she said. “Tell it in the markets; the heir of the gods, the holy one, rides to free the folk of Nabban. The empress is no goddess but a murderer of priests and the children of priests.”
They had prisoners already, bound and roped in strings of five or six in the rear—patrols from the ferry landing, soldiers in imperial colours. Some had been shot by Ivah’s small company of horse-archers, fleeing to carry their news; more than Ahjvar would have expected discarded weapons and went to their knees in surrender. The holy one of the gods, they asked? There was a priest among them, somewhere among Lai Sula’s folk, secret. There were whispers. The empress was the enemy of the gods . . .
“There,” Ghu said, about noon. They had lost sight of the river; on their right hand was rough terrain of rocky woodland, and left and ahead as well. A gap, though, where he pointed, and already a pair of scouts were riding back.
“Swamp, captain, as the holy one said.” The girl—a former slave of the stables and hardly older than Yeh-Lin’s page Jang—grinned, as if the holy one’s knowledge of the river’s terrain reflected well on Daro Korat’s grooms. “And a hard path hugging the toes of the hills ahead, between them and the wetland.” Her partner—father, maybe, they looked near kin—nodded. “Bound to be watchers along it somewhere, but none here at the gap.” Not an archer, but he had a sling tucked through his belt.
“Do we divide?” Yeh-Lin asked.
“Have you seen Dan?”
“The mirror, you mean? I am trying not to attract notice, dead king. Nabban?”
“He’s off the river,” Ghu said.
No delaying, then, or they left the blind prince to be slaughtered like a calf among wolves, the imperial forces on the east able to cross freely over the river. Dan’s force would have put ashore at a bend between another borderland of stony woodland to their north and swamp to the south, and marched a quick quarter mile between the two unopposed—they hoped—to gain the road again.
“So, yes?” Yeh-Lin persisted. Captain-general, but important they know they had their god’s blessing—or that he was no adjunct to his wizard.
“Yes,” he said. “Go well. March swiftly.” He swung Snow away.
“Nabban! Stay out of the fighting. Be the banner of your folk. Let your champion stand between you and the enemy, yes?”
Ghu waved a vague hand.
“Hrm. Dead king—”
“I know. Yes.”
Yeh-Lin issued a few quiet orders. Scouts—archers, this time—started out.
Ghu looked back then. “Leave the children here.”
“I intended to.”
Folly to have brought them even this far.
Some two companies of horse and all the foot were Yeh-Lin’s, now. They would leave, concealed on the forested hillside, what they must abandon: the handful of horses and humans who had succumbed to illness or injury or exhaustion since the river crossing, the prisoners, the pages, the followers that every force on the march gathered but the holy one’s more than most: the unarmed youths, the fugitives, the honestly devout who felt the pull of their newborn god’s gathering strength, or those who only wanted something, anything, to take them away from wherever and whoever they had been.
“Hold this point,” was the last he heard Yeh-Lin saying, to a banner-lord left to keep order. No, to all the gathered irregulars. “Hold yourselves under Lord Daro Ruhi’s command. Rearguard is no dishonour but a great service to the holy one’s cause. Jang, Kufu, Ti, you have charge of the holy one’s dogs. Do not let them follow.”
Ghu’s companies—his, Ivah’s—it was Ivah and Yuro who set the order of march and Ivah’s helmet that fluttered with the red ribbons of command along with the blue and black of the holy one—took the crossbows up, once all the remounts, of which they had far too few, were also carrying two. They would not be coming fresh to the fight by any means, but their strength lay in speed now, and stealth, and the weight of a first rush. Lose that by miserly hoarding and they probably lost all.
Ti-So’aro shook out the sky-blue banner under which the god rode. Each company swung into line under their own, blue and black, no clan-emblems, only a coloured strip or two for their captain, and they sought their own road, east of another uprising of precipitous hills, a land made like a forested version of the badlands in grey, but on a greater scale. And Ahjvar wondered, surprised, what waters had shaped these stones, and if they whispered into Ghu’s dreams. Sometimes he thought he heard waves.
He carried no second rider, and those who did traded them about, to spare the horses as much as they could. Speed, though. Ivah’s fleeting archers, scattered ahead, brought down an imperial patrol and took no prisoners.
Mid-afternoon. Ghu and Ahjvar went forward once the advance patrol sent a message back that had the lookout post; Ivah and Ti-So’aro went with them. They left the horses while they were still concealed, went afoot the last piece, to where the land dropped before them. No great height, but enough, and village fields below, village houses, and the burned ruins of houses—small, rectangular, wooden-walled, with thatched roofs. Their patrol of twenty lay concealed, corpses and bound prisoners of the sentries who had held this height dragged together in the shadow of the trees. A brief flurry under the eaves of the wood and the shadow of the hill, that was all it had been. No alarm given.
It was not a great height, but a long, slow descent, to the gap of the road to Numiya. Below, new bamboo posts blocked a gap in the older defence of the wood-built courier outpost—it looked like an inn to Ahjvar, three wings around a well, a stable detached and behind—and the square stone tower that overlooked the ferry landing. The imperial camp spread through the village and out along the road. A line of slanted poles sliced to give a deadly point arced from the rocky hill-foot around to the road, partially shielding both village and camp, meant to force an attack, at least by horses, around to a narrower gap, but no ditch fronted it. They were not spaced closely enough they could not be avoided by a skilled rider, either.
They could not quite see the ferry landing itself from here, only the higher hills that marched along the gorge, but there seemed
too few soldiers about for the size of the camp. Knowing that there was a rebel force somewhere to the east, as they must guess if they had been hunting Ontari’s scouts, would they leave their rear so weak, even expecting the threat to come from the west over the river? Sula should be worried by the vanishing of scouts and patrols over this past night and day; some should surely have been expected back before now. Some should, god’s luck and devil’s magic or no, have been missed, and given him warning of some kind of threat moving. Ahjvar could not quite believe a wizard skilled as the Pine Lord must be would not notice at least some prickling unease.
Altogether too weak. A party of five to watch from this critical vantage-point that gave sight along the edge of the woodland running north?
Ivah was frowning.
“There’s something else there.” She rose up on her elbows, eyes half shut, fished coins out of her gauntlet. “I think this ridge is watched, too.”
Ghu had a hand bare, splayed on the earth.
“It was,” he said. “It wasn’t when our patrol came up.”
“Why not?”
“I took it back from him,” he said. “The wizard.”
“Does he know?” Ivah asked in alarm.
“I didn’t mean him to. I’m not sure. Probably not. Nothing’s changed down there.”
A windless day. Black smoke rose, a high plume of it, thinning to grey, over the river. It wavered, strengthened. Gar Sisu.
“The prince,” Ti-So’aro said. “Holy one, my lady—orders?”
“Fire,” Ghu said. Eyes shut and fingers digging through meshed roots into the damp earth. “That’s what it is, Ivah. Fire in the earth.”
“The ground’s disturbed behind the line of stakes,” Ahjvar said. “Not just from planting them.”
“Graves?” said Ti-So’aro.
“Maybe those too,” Ivah said grimly. “Can fire-powder be lit, under the earth? If you bury a fire, you starve it.”
“Lai Sula’s face is to us, not the river,” Ghu said. “Mulgo Miar is hiding the tents. Dwei Ontari is traitor to Dan. He was always—of two minds about us. I think I am not his idea of a god, Ahj. And he stood by Dan honestly all through his rebellion, faithful then, and true. Poor Dan.”
The tents were in plain view. But what was in them, to wizardly searching—maybe not. Ahjvar didn’t bother to try.
“Show me the fire,” he said, pulling off his gauntlets. He laced his fingers through Ghu’s, against the earth.
Darkness, a drowning, airless darkness. Strange and vertiginous, the restless earth, the stone that was shell, the hidden waters loud. Roots breathing. He could taste the fire, sleeping, smell the ash, the terror of the horses, the men that would die, devoured, hair burning and flesh, skin bubbling, charring, flaking away . . . Ghu knocked him over and stifled his cry, but he’d struck out at something in the attack. Ghu, of course.
“I thought you were going to stop doing that,” Ghu said, but his voice shook, not for his bleeding mouth, but for what he’d done himself. “I’m sorry, Ahjvar, I’m sorry. I don’t see what you see; I didn’t think what you’d make of it. I’m sorry.”
Ti-So’aro had her hand on a knife. Ivah was half up on her knees, all the patrol about them confused and uncertain.
He lay where he was, sky over him, and shut his eyes. Forget the damned and damning nightmare and the past, what he’d seen was words interwoven, and symbols cast into ornate firesteels, painted in ink on flints. Simple symbolism, and a web of word and syllable that wound into itself, waiting to be uncoiled, to call out sleeping potential in the buried jars. Far from simple. Opened his eyes again. “I’m so tired of nightmares,” was what he whispered. “Sorry.” Caught the beading blood on his thumb. “I knew a Northron caravan wizard once, in Two Hills. They say they have to mark their runes with blood.”
“Their own blood,” Ivah said distantly, watching them.
Ahjvar shrugged, rolled over to press his bloody thumb to the earth. Cut a triangle around it, then another, touching those points, and the third encasing those. Set the twigs—none of them the true thing but whatever it was that grew at arm’s reach, some scrubby little shrub he didn’t know and didn’t like the smell of, either—upright at each point, three and three and three, alder, yew, elm, and reached for the old, deep naming of the names, the truth of fire, the truth of death . . . the name of his god, whose earth this was. Didn’t need to speak the secret verses; he could taste them in his mouth, like blood and earth and ash. He laid his left hand over his right at the centre, covering the smear of blood the earth had taken.
“I can—halfway see what you’re doing,” Ivah said. “I’m not sure I understand it all, but halfway. Want some help?” A loop of yarn dangled from her hand.
He shook his head. “Go bring them up. Let me do this. I can do this. I don’t think you can.”
“Why not?”
He whispered it. Secrets of the night. “Because I am fire and I know what fire is.”
“Ahj.” That flat warning.
What had he said? “I’m all right. I am. Go back to Yuro. Don’t let them ride over me.”
“Leave the patrol with him, Ivah.”
“Are we going?” she asked.
“Oh yes,” Ahjvar said, “Straight down. If Yeh-Lin’s not in position yet—we can’t wait.”
Because he did not think he could hold this in place for long. It flared around the corners of his vision, edged his bones in pain. Fire remembered him, wanted him. How the man Mulgo Miar held such a thing sealed in steel and ink he could not imagine. A different magic, a different set of forms, of temper—a greater wizard. They would have to kill the Pine Lord, the empress’s spy, Dan’s traitor, before he could kill the god of Nabban half born.
He could feel the fire in the earth, but the earth, and Ghu’s blood on his right thumb, under his left palm, were safe. They tamed it, held it. Made it his, to burn at his word, no other. To burn, and if it turned on those who laid it . . . Old Great Gods take them quickly.
They came quietly, as if the very horses wanted to pace lightly, secretly, over the earth. The crossbows slipped away into the woods eastward, to angle down towards the Numiya road. They carried spears as well, shields at their backs, for when attack came against them and they could not reload. Or they might have no more to do than pick off any lords who chose to flee rather than surrender. Being optimistic. They had their orders: let the conscripts run as they would.
Whether Dan, over the river, could draw the imperial forces out of their enclave there by his presence, or whether his companies would have to attack their ditch and palisade, made little difference. Hold their attention, prevent whatever forces had been sent over the river from returning. He might already be engaged. The smoke was only to say he was there, and within sight.
Dark hoof, black pastern and fetlock in the corner of his vision. Fire trailed sight as he blinked, could hardly move to push himself to his knees, as if he had become rooted into the earth. He was glad Yeh-Lin was on the other side of the hill; he did not think he wanted to see what his eyes would have found in her, just now. Knife in his hand, wiped clean of earth. He looked up. Ghu, good shield-bearer, leading Niaul, who blew at him, rolled an eye askance. Smelling the unborn fire.
Ghu nodded, and was already dismounting, spear planted in the earth, as Ahjvar cut the back of his wrist, just below the twisted heavy gold of the bracelet, one hand still pressed over the heart of the interlocked seal of the triad, fire and death and the god who held him. The blood welled, burning, he thought, sheeted down the joint of his thumb, not so very much blood but fire had taken him and was in him still and he understood its hunger, its rage to be free, and so he let it go with a word and shut his eyes against the savage screaming pain of it, the searing air that paralysed the lungs.
“Up,” Ghu said. “Look up, look at me.”
At Ghu kneeling in front of him, gripping his shoulders. Beyond Ghu, over his black-armoured shoulder. Not himself burning. The earth, a long arc
of it, half the perimeter of the stake-guarded camp, erupted in flame, soil, gravel, flung skyward, bamboo burning, whatever else had been laid in the buried trench to feed the fire-powder blazing up like a bonfire, sparks carried skyward, drifting, embers snapping and spitting. A tent caught, another. Thatch that should still have been winter-sodden and reluctant glowed and took as a wild wind flung the wall of flame back over the camp that had set it. Mulgo Miar had meant his fire to cling and burn and so it did, and soldiers hidden in the tents and the houses fled them in disorder. No village folk, which Ahjvar had feared. Fled or driven out to hide in the hills of the gorge, he could spare a thought to hope.
“All right?”
Ahjvar nodded. Throat too raw and rough with remembered smoke, ghosts of smoke, to speak. Found gauntlets, knife . . . feet. Ghu held his stirrup.
“Mulgo Miar,” he said. “Lai Sula we take or not as we can. We want Mulgo Miar, Ahjvar. Alive. A man who was close to the empress, who maybe still is. He’ll know where the empress is. She speaks in his dreams, the assassin said, though more likely it’s the devil.”
Certainly the Pine Lord would be more use alive. But he wanted the man who planned this fire dead. He nodded, and Ghu sprang back to Snow’s saddle, swept up his spear, lowered the mask-like visor of his helmet, a creature suddenly strange and terrible, not human, shadows of dragons . . .
Ahjvar lowered his own visor as they started down, trotting, gathering to speed only as the companies spread out from the narrow defile they had come up, swinging to left and right as was their place. The line of fire was dying, quickly starved, though roofs still burned, and officers were shouting, screaming, driving men to form up, archers taking aim, but crossbows in disarray, and the main companies of spearmen looking more like badly driven cattle in their milling panic to spill off the sides and scatter away.
His place was Ghu’s right. Yuro with his mace and Ti-So’aro had the left. Ti-So’aro rode with the blue banner braced in her stirrup, her retainers about her to guard her and it and their god. Zhung Ario had the company of the right flank; Ivah and the archers of Alwu swept away to the left—riders under an imperial banner broke from the opened gate of the courier post. A few tore away down the road, which would give the crossbows something to do, but the rest swung towards them. Into range of a Grasslander’s bow. One shot. A rider next to the banner fell. They scattered apart, closed up, but the archers of Alwu had their range now. More fell. No horses killed, save one. They needed horses. The imperials found themselves riding parallel to their enemies as Ivah’s wide-spaced company wheeled and turned, driving them as a falcon drives its prey in the air, and then the charge upon the churned and broken ground of the fires and his attention needed to be before him. They jumped the sunken, sulphur-reeking ruin of the trench and were within the camp. A company to the right had charged the archers and if they had shot more than a single flight before they scattered in their fear, he did not see it, but there were imperial soldiers ranged against them now, order and discipline reasserted. A long front on the road, spears braced for the first clash, rocks against the mounted wave that would break over them, or break. A long front was not what these defenders needed—
