by Chris Bunch
Then we reached the Delta. The swampland around us was broken with great rice plantations, small farming villages, and tiny, settled islands, some existing by fishing, some by farming, a few even by ranching. We could have been on a peacetime exercise, except I couldn’t remember any war game that involved this many men.
We acquired carriages here and there, paying again with our scrip, and these became ambulances for the sick and the lame.
We weren’t often forced into the swamp as we moved, but the rough lanes we moved along weren’t much better than mire by the time we’d passed through.
Sinait and her wizards were divided up, some riding forward with the cavalry screen to see if there were any traps laid, the others at the rear, alert for any move from Tenedos. Only a few magical tricks were attempted by his wizards, like a fear wave, an overnight coughing spasm, and unusually voracious fleas, but two could have been natural, and the other cast by someone little more than an apprentice under Gojjam.
I was unsettled and could not figure what the problem was. For a few days, I thought it was worry for Cymea, and certainly that was true.
But there was something else, something dark I felt, and it lay ahead, in Nicias. I thought I was merely fed up with dealing with Barthou and his lot and put my mind’s warning aside.
• • •
A week and a half later, we were barely a third of the way through the Delta. Late one afternoon, a galloper came up from Linerges, commanding the rear guard, announcing a sorcerer had discovered soldiers coming from behind, coming fast.
I hoped it was Yonge’s raiders but didn’t know if Tenedos had come after us and so rode back with three gallopers, Sinait, and my bodyguards, ordering the army to keep moving. I found a lovely spot for an ambush — a long straight stretch of road with swamp on one side, fairly thick underbrush for hiding on the other, and curves at either end. I showed Linerges the spot when we reached him, and we laid an ambush.
Perhaps Yonge was right, and I was that invaluable, but I’d be damned if I’d wrap myself in batting. I had Swift tethered beyond the ambush zone, with the other horses, borrowed a bow and arrows, and concealed myself with Linerges.
Silence fell, and there was little sound except for the whispering wind, water noise from the swamp, then chitters and shrills building as the insects and birds regained confidence. A monkey howled, and another echoed its call. Someone tried to hide a cough, buried a yelp as a warrant kicked him, but mostly the soldiers were quiet. Waiting.
After an hour or so, the animal noises broke off, and someone was coming. We readied our weapons, set to spring the trap when the enemy entered the killing zone.
Four, then eight men rounded the curve. They were ragged, clothes ripped, but carried their weapons at full readiness. Ten yards behind these point men came the rest of their squad, as alert as the others, although three or four were bandaged, and one was limping.
The advance party was almost on us when the main group came around the bend.
I recognized Domina Sendraka among the point men, just as one of his soldiers’ head jerked, and he swept an arm in circles, a silent alarm.
I stood, which wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done, for the alerted soldier almost put an arrow through my weasand before realizing who I was.
“A little careless, Domina,” I said. “We could have been the enemy.”
Sendraka grinned. “No, you couldn’t have, sir, unless you’ve learned how to fly, for the bastards haven’t a boat to float.”
“You did well?”
“We hammered the sons of bitches,” he said, face in a hard grin.
“Casualties?” I said this as if it wasn’t the most important thing in the world to me.
“Four killed, about twenty wounded,” he said, and eyed me. “No civilians, all soldiers.”
Was I this transparent to everyone?
The main element of the skirmishers had closed on me, and Linerges was breaking up the ambush force. I saw Yonge, Cymea beside him.
“I greet you, General. Seer,” I said formally. “Domina Sendraka said you have done well.”
“Perhaps a bit better than well,” Yonge said. “Would you care to stand here in the road and hear the bloody details, or be a proper general and let us get to a campsite where there’ll be wine and soap?”
Cymea was in front of me. “What’s the proper procedure … oh, the hells with it,” she said, and was in my arms. I heard hoots and laughter, ignored them, and kissed her thoroughly.
“Welcome home, love,” I whispered.
“Welcome indeed,” she said. “I want to rape you.”
“I’m rapeable,” I said. “Except …”
“I know. I stink.”
“Well …”
We broke apart. Yonge came close.
“You might as well marry her, Cimabuan, for she’s impervious to the many charms and virtues of a hillman, and such women are priceless.”
• • •
Someone had somewhere acquired a marvelous invention and given it to me. It was a two-piece steel ring with four legs that a canvas bathtub fit into, just big enough for me to sit in, and it was one of my great pleasures to fill and splash about in it for a few minutes at the end of the day’s march.
I’d also become enough of a sybarite to have a light canvas tent, not much more than a pavilion with sides, in one of the supply wagons and had given up sleeping on the ground unless I had to.
With Cymea’s homecoming, I had it erected a bit away from the rest of my headquarters. Svalbard, unbidden, had heated water and filled the tub.
Cymea squealed as if this were the most precious present imaginable, and having been as dirty as she was, I well understood her glee. There was lime-scented soap Svalbard had bought from a farmer, and I left her to soak while I took care of some administrative matters.
Four canvas buckets full of hot water stood outside the tent when I came back, and I lugged them inside.
“And how did you know the water was just getting cold?” she asked.
“I know things like that, because I’ve been associating with evil wizards,” I answered. “Now, if you’ll step out for a moment and allow me to recharge this tub?”
I tried not to think about her brown sleekness while I dragged the tub to the tent’s mouth, upended it, and filled it again.
“Now, milady,” I said, “If you’d be kind enough to get wet, I’d be delighted to scrub you.”
“But I’ve already soaped,” she said.
“Done a shoddy job of it, too. I’m a general, so do what I tell you.”
“Only if you’ll take off your general suit to keep it from getting wet.”
“Your wish …”
She splashed water while I undressed, tossing my clothes into a camp chair nearby. She stood, and I picked up the soap and began moving it across her body.
“I know what I want,” she said, turning, letting me wash the front of her body, lingering over her breasts, stomach, abdomen. “I want to have you on top of me, with your full weight on me, while you’re in me. Right over there, on that camp cot, right now, while I’m still wet and slippery.”
She stepped out of the bath, went to the cot and lay down, brought her legs up and parted them. I moved atop her, slid my cock into her, buried it full length and lay, as ordered, atop her.
“Now I am home,” she sighed, lifting her legs around my back. “Now no tricks, no pulling out, no teasing, just move, keep moving, until we both come. That’s what I want.”
I obeyed, moving within her slowly, deeply, her hands pulling at my back, her lips moving against mine, and I felt the wave building, and she whimpered, her body jerking hard against me, and I went off, and a few seconds later she did, too.
Her body pulsed for long seconds, then went limp.
“You’re nice to be in love with,” she managed after a while.
“Likewise,” I said.
“That was once,” she said. “I promised myself, out there with all the killing, I�
�d get fucked at least three times before doing anything else when I got back.”
“Excellent idea,” I said. “But there’s a banquet of sorts planned, and you’re going to have to learn a new skill.”
“What’s that?”
“Telling war stories.”
“Poot on war stories,” she said. “I just want to fuck for a while. That’s the only skill I need work on right now.” She lifted one leg down onto the cot, began moving it back and forth, and her sex moved with her leg, pulling at my cock, and it stiffened again. She slid one hand down, began caressing my balls.
“Once more like we just did,” she whispered. “Then you’ll need the soap, for I want it in all three places next.”
My ardor was at least as strong as hers, for we did manage three times before an aide tapped decorously on the tent’s entrance pole and announced the staff was assembled for dinner.
• • •
“We had no troubles at all on the march,” Cymea began. We’d eaten, cleared our dishes, and those who wished had more wine. The improvised mess we sat in was a series of interconnected tents, rather shaky, but easy to move and to split apart for other purposes. I sipped a spiced orange drink, listening.
“Tenedos’s forces were about ten leagues beyond where they’d escaped from us. We found some boats in a village and shuttled across above his positions without being discovered. There were patrols out, but we evaded them.”
“You flatlanders,” Yonge put in, “should be complimented if someone calls you blind. We slid past them like …”
“Like a Bandit of the Hills past warders?” I suggested.
“Carrying a dozen chickens and the warder’s daughter,” Yonge added. “But this is Cymea’s story.”
“They had magic out as well, but not much. I suppose Tenedos thought no one would have the temerity to use his own art against him,” Cymea continued.
“Yonge decided we wouldn’t pull any pinprick raids, as we did against the Maisirians, but hit them as hard as we could with one single attack, then pull out, and not give Tenedos a chance to use his magic against us.
“Tenedos is moving north, because there were rows and rows of boats pulled back from the Latane or into sloughs around his position.
“Each day at dawn, he’d fill the boats with maybe a third or so of his army and let the current carry them north. The rest of the army would march and ride to keep up, and generally they’d join up sometime after nightfall. The next day, the boatmen would be walking, and a third of the others floating. By the way, I noted his officers either rode or were on the boats, and never saw one afoot.
“We followed them for four days, as they moved north, very quickly, as two men with one horse can move faster than two men walking. Yonge said if they were able to hold their speed through the Delta, they’d reach Nicias about the same time our soldiers would.
“I thought the most important thing would be to destroy their boats, but we didn’t have enough men. Or so I thought,” she went on. “Then I noticed something. All of the boats looked the same.”
There were about sixty men sitting, all high rankers, listening intently to an eighteen-year-old woman, and there were more standing, packed tightly under the canvas. There was only one other woman, Sinait, and she appeared as fascinated as the men.
“Which meant magic had built them.
“I knew how that had been done: One boat would be carefully built, then cut into fragments. All things are part of the whole, so a fairly simple spell would make each fragment into a complete boat.
“What magic can do,” Cymea said, “magic can undo. It was Yonge’s turn next.”
“Eh. There’s nothing to tell,” Yonge said. “I took a little stroll, did a little whittling, brought Cymea back some woodshavings for her to work on.”
“What he’s not telling you is he and two other men sneaked into the middle of Tenedos’s camp without being seen, cut fragments from a dozen or more of the boats, and brought them back out without notice,” Cymea said.
“It took me the rest of the day to make the spell,” she went on. “Not because it’s complicated, but because it had to be powerful, so I had to keep reciting it over and over, building it, along with my assistants.
“I wish,” Cymea said to Sinait, “I’d had some of your people with me, for it would’ve been a lot easier. At least on my throat.
“Yonge said we should strike that night, but I thought we should wait until the next morning, when we could do the most damage. I had a great fire readied, from the dry driftwood along the banks.
“I didn’t sleep that night, but continued building the spell. I had to take one of my assistants away from the task for a counterspell, to make sure Tenedos didn’t sense what was building, for it was becoming most powerful.
“But no response came. Maybe he was arrogant, maybe he was ‘looking’ in the wrong direction. I don’t know.
“Before dawn, we heard Tenedos’s camp being bugled awake. I waited until the light came across the river, mist walking low along the water.”
There wasn’t a sound in the tent.
“It got light enough to see movement,” Cymea said. “Their boats were being loaded, and we saw the first ones being poled away from the banks and out of the sloughs they’d landed in, and the current taking them.
“I lit the fire, and it caught at once, the herbs and powders I’d added sending the flames roaring in a great, spinning cylinder. We’d have only a few moments before someone saw this fire, which looked … and was … completely unnatural.
“Once more, I said the spell and then cast the wood bits from Tenedos’s boats into the flames.”
Cymea broke off, took a very deep breath, finished the wine in her glass, and refilled it.
“Out of the river, the boats caught fire as well. First sparks, then small flames, which the men tried to beat out, but this fire wasn’t of natural origin and could only be extinguished when my fire on the land burnt out.
“The fires raged, and men themselves began burning. Burning or jumping overboard. I don’t think many of them could swim. The fires kept burning, and boats were floating away, empty, roaring in flames.
“The river was full of men. Then there were louder screams, echoing down the river, and the water was torn. Crocodiles.”
She shuddered, drank more wine.
“The river beasts fed well that morning,” Yonge said happily. “And the river, the great Latane, ran with blood. All was crazy, all was havoc.
“So then we attacked them, running into the middle of where their camp had been, where their columns waited for the marching order.
“Now there was a slaughter,” he went on. “One hundred fifty madmen, against an army of what, a million? Two million? But all was confusion, screaming, no one knew what anyone was doing, what was going on, and we flung the little firesticks we’d used before against their pack animals and wagons. We kept at the run and killed as we went.
“That was where we took our casualties, but we slew far more, ten, a hundred times more than we lost in the minutes we were in the middle of their host.
“We ran out the far side of the enemy camp, laughing like loons,” he said. “We stopped long enough for Cymea and the other mages to cast a diversionary spell, then ran on. Cymea said magicians were casting after us, but their strength was broken, their confidence shaken, and so we escaped, running down a farming road in broad daylight with no one, not sorcery, not soldiers, chasing us.
“North of the disaster we found an abandoned ferryboat, a big one, tied to a dock. We piled aboard and pushed off, and the current carried us downstream, through and around the islets, and we used the boat’s rudder to steer us through the mire. By the time we were forced to abandon the boat, bits and pieces of our handiwork were floating past us.”
“Bodies,” Cymea said softly, so we all had to crane to hear her. “I’ve never seen so many bodies. Bodies … and parts of bodies. And the creatures that still fed on them.”
She drank her glass dry, stood.
“And that was what we did to Tenedos.”
The officers were standing, cheering her and Yonge and the incredible victory.
I wonder how many of them noticed Cymea was crying.
TWENTY-TWO
BETRAYAL IN NICIAS
It was a fine season as the Time of Dews gave way to the Time of Births, but the dark foreboding still hung over me. I’d been fighting almost continuously since I was eighteen. Twenty years of bloodshed or its threat, and I was tired.
“So what shall we do when peace comes?” Cymea asked. “It’s now we? I’m deeply honored,” I said, bowing in my saddle. “You’re about the only option I’m interested in,” Cymea said. “Play politics with my brothers and sisters? I don’t even know if the Tovieti would be willing to go into a legitimate government. I’ll wager it’s hard having to compromise with your enemies when the best solution before was just throttling them. For all I know, the Tovieti will develop a purity problem, go underground once more and dig out the yellow cords. Although I’ll always be a Tovieti in spirit, I don’t think that’s for me.”
“That’s a true blessing,” I said. “I can’t quite picture explaining why my partner’s a little late coming home — ’had to stop and strangle a couple of the local merchants she thinks are overcharging her, but won’t you have some tea while you’re waiting?’”
“What kind of home would we have?” she asked. “I don’t know,” I said, leaning over in my saddle, plucking a scarlet flower from a bush and presenting it to her. “I don’t know if I want to go back to Cimabue, even though I’ve blathered on about the joys of being a noble bumpkin.”
“And do you … we … want to live that far away from the swirl of events?”
“Hells yes,” I answered quickly. “I’ve been too much in those moils and toils. But we could live in … no, not in, but maybe near a city, and you could keep me posted. Ride back every night and tell the old man what the latest styles and gossips are.”
“Poot,” Cymea said. “Where I go, you go.”
“Something interesting just came,” I said. “You know, I never worried about money. Either I had none but had the army, or I had an enormous amount and couldn’t spend it all in a lifetime.
