by Chris Bunch
“Things could not return to what they were, at our greatest moment, but be better, be more glorious.
“You don’t trust me … at least not now. But once you’re in Jarrah, sitting your own throne, you’ll realize that was a momentary aberrance. Besides, when there are those thousands of leagues between us, how could trust or not-trust enter into it? I’d hardly send armies across the suebi because of some minor disagreement, and I can’t see anything worse than that. Remember how many years we ruled … yes, I use the word ‘we,’ for you helped create my policies, my actions, more than anyone besides myself. Why not accept this final recognition, this ultimate honor from me?”
I could feel his will, perhaps his magic, batter at me. I started to say something, stopped, considered, while his eyes burnt. I chose what I was going to say very carefully, was about to speak.
Suddenly his lips thinned, and he flushed with rage.
“Very well,” he said, almost shrill. “Very well. You’ve turned away, turned away from your rightful emperor. So be it.
“Damastes á Cimabue, you’ve made many mistakes in your life. But this is the worst, for now you’ve brought complete doom on yourself, and on those fools you lead.
“You will not take my hand, will not accept my offer of peace.
“Then let it be war, total war, until either you or I have been spun back to the Wheel.
“And I promise you this: It shall not be me Saionji takes into her final embrace!”
He kicked his horse into a gallop and thundered back to his own lines.
I rode back to where Sinait and Cymea waited. “You heard?”
“I did not,” Sinait said. “I felt you and the once-emperor would value privacy.”
“I have no such honor,” Cymea said firmly. “I listened as best I could, and unless you forbid it, Damastes, I’ll tell Sinait what happened.”
“You have my permission,” I said, “and I wish what was said repeated to your Tovieti and the army.”
“Good,” she said. “I hoped you’d say that, for it gives us strength to know you refused a crown.”
Sinait’s eyes rounded.
“It wasn’t quite that nice,” I told her. “With Tenedos I’d be more likely to get seven inches of steel between my ribs than a gold ring on my pate. But come. We’ve got a battle to fight.
“I’ve had enough of that wizard and his wordplay.”
TWENTY
SAIONJI’S WARRIORS
If it had been my battle for the winning or losing, and I were still Tenedos’s first tribune, I would have let the fight come to me. The rebels — my forces — had long lines of communication, longer than Tenedos’s, and had slightly greater numbers.
But perhaps his rear, however he’d crossed the Latane so secretly and swiftly, about two leagues wide here, wasn’t as secure as I’d thought. So far, none of Kutulu’s men, Yonge’s skirmishers, nor our magic had been able to report how the feat had been accomplished.
About an hour after the parley, such as it’d been, failed, drums snarled, and Tenedos’s army attacked.
There was no subtlety — he began with a frontal attack on my positions. I wasn’t surprised, nor did I think Tenedos was careless or incompetent. His magic, whatever it would be, needed blood, and it mattered not whether it was shed by his soldiers or mine.
They came at a walk, breaking into a trot no matter how their warrants shouted, across the open ground and up the slight slope, and our arrow storm met them. Heads down, shields up, they forged ahead. The front rank went down almost to a man, the second came on, was broken, and the third wave trampled their own wounded and dying fellows to get at us.
They closed with my front line, and the battle became a dust cloud, with swirling knots of fighters smashing forward, falling back, milling about, or holding around standards or on a slight rise or even no distinguishable feature at all, swords rising and falling, spears darting, occasionally a spatter of arrows going home.
The second prong of Tenedos’s assault came from his right. It went wide, attempting to sweep around my left wing. His cavalry, and I was pleased to note that he had far fewer horsemen than I, covered the gaps in his lines and his flanks.
I sat on that hillock, the highest point of land, trying to keep my damned mouth shut and not tell a domina to guard his right or left or put in his gods-damned reserves and stop holding them for a birthday present. This was the hardest part of battle for me, trying to avoid getting sucked into the little skirmishes, to trust my commanders, and to keep some idea of the situation as horsemen dashed here, formations trotted past there, officers screamed everywhere, and men stumbled out of battle wounded or just fell where they’d been struck.
Sinait saw Tenedos’s cavalry on my left go into the trot, trying to flank me.
“This, I think, they’ll find interesting,” she said, and sprinkled water from a vessel about her. The water smelt strange, as if imbued with unknown perfumes, and fell not as drops, but as colored mist.
All the while, she was murmuring gently, under her breath. When she stopped, I asked what she was doing.
“Watch their horses,” she said, half-dreamily.
Tenedos’s cavalry was riding hard, jut short of full gallop, and suddenly they veered in confusion. I peered across the battlefield, couldn’t make out what’d startled them, then saw the disappearing traces of Sinait’s illusion, a wide expanse of water. She’d created a mirage, I suppose you’d call it, except that it’d been real enough to scare the galloping horses, send them veering aside. At speed, it takes little to break a cavalry charge, especially if the horsemen aren’t fully trained, which takes years.
The confusion blunted their attack, and I sent a galloper to the skirmishers on my left and a company of archers in reserve, ordered both units to exploit the confusion and attack the cavalry. The bowmen ran hard through our lines, taking only their weapons and leaving their protective stakes, trying to catch up to the skirmishers as they pelted on, intent on killing the enemy and, being skirmishers, looting the corpses. In civil war, ransoms are not generally offered or taken.
I ordered my left wing forward. I was curious to see how they’d do, for they were led by another of the old guard, Captain, now Domina, Pelym, who’d commanded a company of Tenth Hussars and was enraged that I’d made him an infantryman, which he felt was a demotion, no matter the rank. If he did well this day, and lived, he’d be a general, and I wondered if that would shut him up. Probably not. Cavalrymen are only slightly less thickheaded than battering rams.
A swirl of confusion developed, and Tenedos’s forces fell back toward the start line. They didn’t break but moved in good order.
There were still too many of Tenedos’s soldiers held back from battle. So far, this wasn’t developing into anything close to the major engagement I’d hoped for, a battle of annihilation that’d knock Tenedos out before the campaign really began.
My center, under Linerges, was holding firm, and reforming as Tenedos’s first attack fell away.
Somebody shouted, pointed, and I saw another wave of Tenedos’s soldiers attack, again toward my center.
I sent a galloper to my right wing, telling its commander, one Ilkley, a high-ranking Tovieti who’d been one of their spies within the Imperial Army, to move forward cautiously against this new formation, attempting to flank it, but bending his own right flank back in the event Tenedos attacked.
With Sinait, Cymea, Svalbard, and my company of bodyguards under Baron Pilfern, we rode forward. I was trying to determine who the new attackers were.
As they closed, I began to worry, for they wore a common uniform: dark boots, tan breeches and blouse, with black armored back-and breastplates. They wore old-fashioned close-fitting helmets with a nosepiece and ear holes. I wondered where Tenedos had found the money for this outfitting, for they were smart enough to be a king’s guard.
The men were commonly armed with a sword and a short stabbing spear. But none carried a shield.
Someth
ing more amazing — though these lines of soldiers were very well outfitted, they moved like the rawest recruits, stumbling, waving their weapons about, sometimes tumbling over, taking their fellows with them.
As they came, I heard them chanting, less a battle cry or song than shouted grunts, like a lion’s hunting cough.
They slammed into my lines hard, and my soldiers balked a moment in surprise, then struck back. Then the horror began, for as these dark warriors were wounded or killed, they changed, armor melting away, disappearing, as did their arms, and these warriors turned into old men, children, women. A moan of terror came upslope at me.
There was only a moment before panic would strike. I shouted at my aides to get back to the hilltop, at Pilfern to follow me, drew my sword, rose in my stirrups, and bellowed the charge.
There was only a dozen or so yards between us and the lines, so we were barely trotting when we smashed into the struggling mass. I saw one of the warriors in black, drove my sword into his chest, nearly vomited as the face changed into that of a kindly middle-aged shopkeeper, blood pouring from her throat as she fell away, and there was another one, and now I realized they all had the same face, plain, long-faced, not unlikable, with a determined jaw, and I killed this man as well, and he became a boy of ten.
I saw, felt, the battle waver for an instant, and then heard trumpets and from the right flank my Seventeenth struck hard. A sword burned pain across my calf, and I cut the swordsman down, not seeing if it was human or one of these monsters.
They fought badly, but with determination. We drove them back and back, killing as we went. Some of Tenedos’s soldiery threw down their weapons, waved white, surrendered, but not these nightmares in black.
Now the battle was fully joined, and what would happen, would happen. All I knew was a mist of blood and my sword moving, flashing, driving into soft flesh, grating against bone, my armored sleeve or shield blocking thrusts, killing, ever killing.
Then there was no one left to kill, and I stood on a field of bodies as Tenedos’s army retreated, pulling back steadily, even the few remaining soldiers in black obeying the summons of their trumpets.
I saw the strew of bodies, bodies transmuted into civilians, and knew why Tenedos had rounded up all those villagers. His magic put them through some sea change, turned them into homunculi, I suppose the word would be, and sent them out with one thought — to kill and die for him.
I wanted to collapse, to wash my blood-drenched body, to clean the filth, but couldn’t.
I changed horses and called for another attack, and we went forward, slowly, steadily, pushing Tenedos back and back, toward the river, as he’d pushed us months ago.
We crested the hill, and saw the Latane, and I saw how Tenedos had crossed the river. The Latane was spotted with islands here and there, and I remembered passing through this maze years ago, admiring the skill of the ship captain for picking the right passageway.
Bridges now stretched from island to island, and Tenedos’s forces retreated to and across them, leaving a rear guard behind to hold us back.
As soon as the last soldier was across, the bridge would vanish, and now I understood the speed of the ex-emperor’s crossing. The bridges would have been built beforehand, cut apart, and recreated by his Corps of Wizards at the time of crossing.
Sorcery, again, had carried the day. But this trick would work only once.
But the warriors in black were another matter. I didn’t know where this magic had come from — a spell invented by Tenedos, or, perhaps, could this transmutation be allowed by Saionji herself? Was she rewarding her servant, even though he thought himself mightier than the goddess?
I didn’t know and doubted if even Cymea and Sinait could investigate successfully.
But I did know one thing.
With this magic Tenedos could change anyone, the most tottering ancient, into a warrior, and the war, which I’d hoped to end easily and soon, had barely begun.
TWENTY-ONE
CYMEA’S RAID
Most of the troops were elated at defeating Tenedos for the first time, although I saw some long faces among the soldiery, worried, like their commanders, about this new evil of Tenedos’s.
That night, Yonge, Sinait, Linerges, Jakuns, and Cymea met, but nothing new came beyond this new worry. “Therefore,” Yonge asked, “we do what?”
I thought it was doubly important our army make for Nicias and link up with the Grand Council, not only to augment our forces, but to increase the legitimacy of our cause.
Barthou and Scopas were a negative factor, since they’d been Bairan’s lapdogs, but whoever held the capital held Nicias and would be considered by most Numantians to have a legitimate claim to the kingdom.
The back of my brain wondered at all these complexities and longed for the simple, uncomplicated days when whacking someone with a sword was enough to settle the issue.
I decided the army would speed march toward Nicias, cutting through the edges of the Delta when they reached it, while a specially chosen force would harry Tenedos and try to keep him from either attacking us on the march or somehow beating us to Nicias.
“Interesting,” Jakuns said. “Magic against magic.”
“Precisely,” I said. “Harry him with fire and sorcery, and keep him too busy to follow us.”
“So once again,” Yonge said, “it’ll be fools like my skirmishers who’ll get fucked, because they’re dumb enough to volunteer because they don’t want to be part of the unwashed multitude.”
“Precisely,” I said. “No guts, no glory, as they say.”
“Pah!”
Linerges smiled, a rather evil smile, and whispered something to Yonge, who also smirked in an unsettling way.
“Skirmishers,” the Man of the Hills mused. “Plus some of the veteran light infantrymen, perhaps a few of the lads from Khurram. Everyone mule-mounted. We have enough of them. A good wizard?”
“That’ll be me,” Cymea said.
“And why is that?” bristled Sinait. “Am I too old to go adventuring?”
“Not at all,” Cymea said. “You and your wizards set up the protective wards around the army, correct? Who else should administer them? I’m the outsider. And I’ll take a couple of sages I know. That’ll be enough for what Damastes wants done.”
“I vastly admire,” I said, “two people bickering about who’s going to get to go closer to the heart of danger.” I wasn’t being that sarcastic.
“The only question is,” Yonge said, smile growing broader, “who commands this daring expedition?”
“Don’t be an asshole,” I snapped. “You know the answer.”
“We do indeed,” Linerges said. “And it isn’t you.”
“The hells it isn’t!” Now I understood the amusement.
“The hells it is,” Linerges said with finality. “Nor is it going to be me. Damastes, I know you believe in leading from the front. But gods dammit, now’s the time you’ll have to start leading, period.”
“And what does that mean?” I near-snarled.
“We’re marching on Nicias,” he said patiently. “There’s Barthou, Scopas, Trerice waiting. Who do you think they’re expecting to meet them? Who do you think will have the most weight? Someone they barely remember, like myself? Or the vaunted first tribune, the slayer of King Bairan?
“And if you give me any answer but the right one, I’ll suggest here and now that you’ve become a little too enamored of being dashing, daring, and all too often too gods-damned close to dead!”
My Cimabuan temper boiled for an instant, and I thought of hitting him, and would have if he’d still been smiling. But his face, and Yonge’s, had gone serious. I took a deep breath, then another, then looked at Cymea. Her expression was carefully blank.
“No, Damastes,” Linerges went on. “You’ve got to be at the front of the army, for all the reasons I mentioned. Plus we’ve got to arrive in Nicias looking like conquerors. If we have to tell those idiots on the Council that you’ve b
een eaten by snakes in some swamp somewhere, what do you think that’ll look like?
“That’s why I said I can’t go, much as I’d like to, much as I think I owe our ex-emperor a bit of beard sizzling. This isn’t a bunch of happy-go-lucky skirmishers. This is an army. Soon, I hope, to be the only army in Numantia. And you’re its gods-damned general, so start generaling!”
He sat down abruptly.
No one has ever said I’m blindingly swift, but I’ve always been able to face a fact when it slaps me bloody.
“All right,” I said, in a distinctly uncivil tone. “I’ll lead the march on Nicias.”
Yonge waggled his eyebrows.
“And I’ll have fun,” he said. “Myself and the luscious Cymea, eh?” He leered ostentatiously at her.
“But what about your goat?” she said. “Goat? What goat?”
“Isn’t it true that the Men of the Hills carry goats with them for pleasure? I’d hate to interfere with such a warm, tender relationship.” Sinait snickered.
Yonge growled. “I liked you better when you were a demon-worshiping strangler.”
• • •
One hundred fifty skirmishers and infantrymen were ready to march off two days later, with Cymea and two other magicians, both Tovieti. They moved afoot for ease and because well-trained soldiers can move faster, for longer periods of time, than any mounted force.
The raiding force’s departure was covered by a rainstorm and Sinait’s magic.
Cymea kissed me; then I watched them move away, irregular lines disappearing into the driving rain, and learned in my guts yet another of war’s nastinesses: worry.
Sometimes it’s harder for those who stay behind.
• • •
The long march began. There was no enemy to worry about, and we marched, through the last of the unworked lands, into the rolling farm country. This was the rice bowl of Numantia, the endless paddies of southern Dara, interspersed with patches of jungle.
