by Ian Irvine
She drew her blade and ducked behind a rock outcrop. From below, Nish heard a grunt and a liquid gush, and prayed that the blood spilled was the enemy’s. He ran on tiptoes up the pass, which broadened out towards its crest; here it was ten paces wide. It was almost pitch dark at this level but the growing light had begun to illuminate the snowy top of each peak.
The defenders guarding the western entry to the pass would be over the crest and down, but Nish did not think they would leave their posts without a direct order, in case of an enemy attack from both sides of the range at once. He passed the camp fire, but where was the camp? He could not see any tents.
With a high-pitched whistle, a skyrocket shot up from behind the slot on a column of fire and burst high above the pass in thousands of red sparks that would be visible for leagues. Nish cursed. It was an emergency signal, and Klarm’s army couldn’t miss it.
The red glare starkly revealed the pass and a neat curve of supply tents fifty paces away against the cliff wall of the white-thorn peak. Scuffling came from the tents – soldiers pulling on their boots; one minute could mean the difference between victory and oblivion.
Ignoring his bruised feet and throbbing leg, he raced for the tents and slashed the ropes along the outside with huge swings of his sabre, then did the same on the other side, collapsing the tents on their occupants.
In the fading light of the skyrocket he saw movement at the end of the closest tent. Nish crept down and, as the first head appeared, took a mighty swing and cut it off. Blood spurted in his face; he dashed it away with his sleeve. A soldier began scrabbling out of the third tent on hands and knees.
Running at him, Nish thrust his sabre through the man’s guard and into his side while he was still off-balance. He wrenched out the blade, put his foot in the centre of the soldier’s chest and drove him backwards onto the next man.
They were now coming out too quickly to attack. He ran into the darkness and limped back towards the slot, praying that his militia had won through. If it had not, it might be too late.
There was still no light down here, which was to his advantage. He could hear people moving about and talking quietly, though it was impossible to tell if they were his troops or the enemy. He felt another prickle of fear. Had he miscalculated, leaving Chissmoul and Flangers to attack from the rear? She was not trained in hand-to-hand fighting, while Flangers was just one man.
He continued, sabre bared, and just caught sight of the flash of steel, swinging in a huge arc.
‘Clech, it’s me!’ he cried, dropping to the ground. ‘What’s going on?’
‘The guards are dead. We’ve done it, Nish. The pass is ours.’
‘Not yet. Their reinforcements are on the way, maybe thirty. We’ll have to try and take them down as they come.’
‘No, we won’t,’ said Clech. ‘There they are. Get down.’
He pulled Nish down flat. The running enemy were silhouetted in the dim light at the crest of the pass, and Clech roared, ‘Fire!’
A fusillade of arrows whistled overhead from Nish’s archers, who were already through the pass, and many of the enemy reinforcements fell. A second salvo took down more, whereupon the rest turned and ran.
‘Now we have the pass,’ said Nish, feeling a quiet satisfaction that they’d won it at so little cost. But how long could they keep it?
‘Hold your fire!’ said Clech. ‘Archers, this way.’
As he and Nish headed up to the crest, a second rocket shot up from further down the mountain behind them, bursting with an ice-blue flare that cast a cold light on the enemy dead and the snowy peaks to either side. The last of the reinforcements were bolting down towards the western gate of the pass.
‘That’s Klarm’s answer,’ said Flydd, stepping out from behind a crag and wiping his blade on one of the fallen soldiers. ‘He’s on his way.’
ELEVEN
The light was growing rapidly now. ‘Come on!’ Nish yelled. ‘We’re not done yet. They still hold the western gate.’
He led half a dozen archers down the winding track, pieces of the slaty rock crunching underfoot. The pass was broader here, though it narrowed again towards the western entrance, which was several hundred paces below. It was guarded by eight soldiers plus the three survivors from the tents, and a scrier with a wisp-watcher.
‘I knew I’d sensed a scrier,’ he said to Flydd.
‘Lucky he wasn’t watching the eastern side,’ grunted Flydd.
‘At attack from that side wasn’t very likely, fortunately. What do we do with them?’ said Nish, though he already knew. With a mighty army approaching, he was going to need every fighter he had, and he could not afford to waste any on guarding prisoners.
‘Cut them down. That’s what they were going to do to us.’
The archers fired and two of the enemy fell, but the scrier and the other soldiers scrambled over their barricade, out of sight, and by the time Nish and Flydd had reached the gate they were way down the track, out of range.
‘I hope we’re not going to regret allowing them to escape,’ Nish said, studying the defences.
This gate of the pass was, if anything, even more difficult to attack than the other, for the track up to it followed the crest of a knife-edged ridge for the last couple of hundred paces. Only a handful of troops could walk abreast, and barely three for the last fifty paces, where the ground was extremely steep and broken.
The enemy had built a low dry-stone wall across the entrance, only chest high, but a major obstacle on that slope. Nish would need ten troops to man it, plus reinforcements within shouting distance. Klarm’s army was approaching from the other side of the range, but with the air-sled he could drop soldiers anywhere and both entrances to the pass might need to be defended at once.
The light was growing rapidly and for once it was not raining, though it was windy and dank. Now that the action had passed, Nish was cold and hungry, and he could feel every blister and ache. He sent a detail up to ransack the enemy bodies for weapons and provisions.
‘And when you’ve finished, dump them well down the track in Klarm’s path. I’ve got enough sick men and women without having rotting bodies spreading disease.’
‘Good idea,’ said Flydd. ‘His troops will have to pass their dead comrades to get to us, and that won’t be good for morale.’
‘They’re professional soldiers. It’ll take more than that to shake them.’
‘They’re well trained, certainly,’ said Flydd. ‘But the world has been at peace since Jal-Nish crushed the last opposition seven or eight years ago. Most of his soldiers would never have seen real action, and no amount of training can make up for being blooded in mortal combat, as your militia have been. Until men have experienced that, you never know which of them will fight, which will freeze and which will run.’
‘I still remember my first battle,’ said Nish, with an involuntary shiver.
The pass had been taken at little cost – five of the militia slain, three more severely wounded and unlikely to survive, plus the man who had fallen so noisily and raised the alarm. He had broken both legs and his right hip, injuries that doomed him up here.
Clech had several flesh wounds, while Chissmoul had lost most of her left ear to a skewering blow that could easily have killed her, and several others in the vanguard of the attack had minor injuries, but the rest of the militia had not seen action.
Nish sent down troops to defend the eastern and western entrances, and organised work details to begin laying dry-stone walls across them so the enemy could not retake the pass as readily as he had done. The captured supply tents contained a good store of weapons, provisions, and dry clothes. After ensuring that everyone was fed with the best there was to offer and plenty of it, he had them change into clean, dry uniforms, and sleep.
Huwld came to Nish several times, bearing food and drink, but he took nothing; his stomach was still clenched so tight that he did not think he could get anything down.
Satisfied that he’d taken care of his peop
le as best he could, Nish and Flydd climbed a spur of the white-thorn peak, where they could look down over the approaches to both the eastern and western entrances. It was fully daylight now, and there was no one in sight in either direction, but with Klarm’s enormous army moving this way, Nish could not relax.
‘Nice day,’ said Flydd laconically.
Nish eyed him warily, unsure if he had recovered from yesterday’s fit of bad temper. ‘Every day we stay alive is a nice day.’
Flydd squirted brown wine from a wineskin into his mouth, gagged, swallowed and made a face. ‘Yuk! Tastes as though it’s been strained through a camel’s saddle blanket.’
‘Then why drink the filthy stuff? I can smell it from here.’
‘It numbs my guts.’
‘They’re still troubling you, then?’
‘With every breath; every step; and every thing I eat. I curse the day I took renewal, Nish, and it’s getting worse, not better; some days I’d sooner be dead.’
‘I’m sorry. I hadn’t realised it was that bad.’
‘Ah, well,’ said Flydd, raising the wineskin again. ‘I knew the risks. Only great mancers can work the Renewal Spell at all, and more of them die than survive it. And of those who do survive, a good few wish they hadn’t.’
Nish couldn’t think of any suitable response, so he sat down and looked around, and shortly Flydd perched beside him. A watery sun peeped through the rushing clouds, but exposed to the wind as they were it was chilly, though Nish was not unduly bothered by it. Having spent his early life in the frigid south, he preferred cold to the suffocating, clammy heat he’d endured since coming to Gendrigore.
Patches of snow and grainy ice, which had slid down the steep slopes of the white-thorn peak, lay in crusted heaps on those parts of the pass where the sun did not reach, though elsewhere the ground consisted of bare rock or slaty rubble.
High above to their left a ridge extended out into the enormous overhang he’d noted previously, resembling a beaky old man’s nose. Its bridge and tip were covered in a thick sheet of ice, and as he stared at it Nish’s dormant clear-sight flashed on for a few seconds and he saw that at the end of the nose the ice was fissured. The wind howled around the bulbous tip and through a pair of shallow caves on the lower side, like flaring nostrils.
‘I hope that ice doesn’t come down on us,’ he said, adjusting the staff, which had grown hot again.
‘It looks solid enough,’ Flydd said carelessly, offering a lump of cheese and the wine. ‘Though I dare say pieces fall off when the weather warms up.’
‘I think this is warm weather, up here.’ Nish gnawed on a rind of cheese but did not take the proffered wine skin. He was too tired and, with the enemy likely to attack at any time, could not afford to dull his wits. ‘Well, Xervish, against the odds we did it.’
‘Very satisfactory,’ said Flydd, rubbing his hands together. ‘I never imagined we could take the pass at all, much less that we’d capture it at so little cost.’
Nish looked down. ‘We lost nine dead or doomed in the attack,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t call that a little cost.’
‘When you go to war, you have to expect casualties.’
‘I do, but I’ll never get used to ordering my friends and comrades to their deaths.’
It was a disagreement they’d had many times over the years, and he did not have the strength to repeat it. Nish closed his eyes, but saw the blade pierce Gi’s heart, then Forzel beheaded, and had to open his eyes again, for all the other deaths he was responsible for, recent and long ago, were waiting in line to torment him and undermine the small satisfaction he’d taken in the victory.
It’s all right for you, his dead seemed to be saying, but what about us? And then there was Maelys. He hadn’t entirely given up hope, yet how could she have survived?
‘Still, I thank you,’ Nish added after a long pause.
‘What for?’ said Flydd, tearing at a dark strip of leathery dried meat – horse or buffalo.
‘For driving me to attempt the impossible. How did you know it was possible?’
‘I didn’t, but I couldn’t let Klarm win; not until he’s earned it, at any rate.’
‘You don’t believe we can beat him?’
Nish took off his boots and peeled off the filthy, slimy socks to inspect his feet, which were bruised, swollen and had blisters upon blisters.
‘You should have attended to your feet,’ said Flydd. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘I had to take care of my troops, first.’
‘The best way to take care of them is for you to be fit for action.’ Flydd stared down the eastern pass, and said, ‘Beat Klarm here? If we can, they’ll have to make a new Great Tale about it, for it will surely be the greatest victory against the odds of all time.’
‘In Gendrigore I was told that a few hundred could hold this pass against an army.’
‘That’s easy to say when you’re fifty leagues away, and full of piss and ale.’
‘Once we’ve walled off the two entrances,’ said Nish, ‘I reckon we might be able to hold it.’
‘We’ll make them pay dearly for every life they take, but even if we could slay ten of them for every man of ours, how can the result be in doubt? You’ve got a hundred and fifty bone-weary troops, if you count the cook’s boy, Huwld. Klarm has, what, eight or nine thousand. He can take losses of sixty to our one, and wear us down. There comes a time when even the strongest man can no longer lift his sword, and then he falls. Or Klarm could simply starve us out – which would only take a week and a half.’
‘He can’t wait that long,’ Nish said gloomily. ‘The really wet season is coming and he’s got to get his army down to the lowlands before it hits.’
‘Anyway, he’s got the air-sled,’ said Flydd. ‘He can spy out our defences from above, then fly over the pass and drop thirty soldiers behind us, and do it again and again. As long as he can fly, the result can’t be in doubt. He may also have flappeters or other flying, flesh-formed beasts.’
Nish’s morale was sliding by the second, but he could not give in; the consequences were too dire. ‘We’ve got to think of a way to beat him,’ he said dully.
A rain squall swept up the eastern side of the range towards them. Nish shivered, and could not bear to wear his filthy, bloodstained clothes for another minute. ‘I’m going down.’
‘Good idea. Get some rest. You’re going to need it.’
‘You haven’t slept in days,’ Nish retorted.
‘I can doze on my feet. I’ve got a lot to think about.’
Taking the half-gnawed strip of meat from his mouth, Flydd inspected it, looked disgusted, then put it back and headed further up the ridge, swinging the stave. The serpent’s green eyes caught the light and momentarily their gleam echoed Flydd’s own – at those times when he’d looked at the tears.
Down at the eastern entrance, Nish found an exhausted Flangers supervising a dozen militiamen who were blocking the slot and fitting broken rock together on top of the buttresses, raising walls there so they could not be scaled. Huwld was carrying stone up, running back and forth like a little dervish. Nish eyed the work distractedly – there didn’t seem much point when Klarm could fly over on the air-sled.
Chissmoul was slumped on a rock at Flangers’s feet, as pale as the snow. The bandage wrapped around her head was bloodstained over her missing ear and she was shivering.
‘I’ll take over,’ said Nish. ‘Get some rest, you two, and take everyone but the pass guards with you.’
‘You need rest more than I do, surr,’ Flangers said stubbornly.
‘It’s an order, Lieutenant Flangers.’
Flangers turned around, staring at him disbelievingly. ‘Surr?’
‘No man who ever served me has deserved promotion more,’ said Nish.
‘But …’
‘Get moving. You’re my best and most experienced officer and I can’t do without you – well fed and rested.’
‘I might say a
s much to you, surr,’ Flangers said quietly.
‘Where are they?’ said Nish that afternoon. ‘Why aren’t they coming?’
He had cleaned himself up, been to the healers, and slept for five restless hours. Now he was sitting on the wall above the partly blocked slot, looking down the approaches to the pass. It was afternoon yet there was still no sign of the enemy, though the wind was wailing eerily between the peaks and the superstitious Gendrigoreans were muttering about evil ghosts and mad spectres coming for them in the night.
Nish wasn’t looking forward to darkness either. The weather was thoroughly miserable; already they’d had rain, sleet and snow, and the last of the wood the enemy had left here had been burned.
Several militiamen, miners back home, had dug chunks from a thin seam of oil shale in the wall of the unnamed peak, and had managed to get the waxy rock to burn, though with clouds of pungent black smoke and a yellow flame that had little heat in it. Still, any fire was better than none and it would be particularly welcome when night fell.
‘They can’t be far below us, can they?’ said Chissmoul.
‘It didn’t look that way when they fired their signal rocket,’ said Flydd. ‘I’d say Klarm is deliberately holding back.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘He’s a prudent man, and he’s used to controlling everything. We’ve shocked him twice in days –’
‘Twice?’ said Nish.
‘He lost five hundred men in the lower clearing yesterday and he can’t be sure why. Was that flood just an accident – or did we make it happen with mancery?’
‘Or was a higher agency involved?’ said Nish. ‘Stilkeen! And are we in league with it?’
‘I hadn’t considered that,’ Flydd said thoughtfully, stroking his serpent staff. ‘Yes! If we could make him believe that …’
He rose, took a turn up to the crest of the pass and back, warmed his hands at the oil-shale fire, on which Huwld the cook’s boy was stirring hot soup in a cauldron, and sat down again.
‘I don’t think he will,’ Flydd added, ‘but until Klarm understands what happened yesterday and how we got away, he won’t move against us. Boobelar will have spilled his guts, but he’s an unreliable witness and Klarm will want to see for himself. He’s probably searching the clearings and the river now and checking our dead.’
