by Chris Bunch
In spite of the wind and occasional rain, the incense smoked into life. A crosswind took the smoke under Hal’s nose, and he coughed. It was a smell not to his liking, of spices far too strong and unknown.
One of the acolytes and a guard turned and scowled in his direction. Hal put on an innocent air, and walked his rounds until they lost interest.
Evidently, magicians needed silence to work their crafts. Ribbons were laid out in intricate patterns atop the carpets, and the two acolytes took up stations, each holding a long taper.
Two gestures by the wizard, and the tapers smoked into flame.
The sorcerer picked up a huge book, very ancient and decrepit, opened it, and began chanting.
Hal shivered, for the chanting came very clear to him, in spite of the wind, and grew louder. He didn’t know the words as the chant grew louder and louder, the voice deeper in pitch, almost sounding as if no human throat could produce these sounds.
The magician gestured three times toward the Roche lines, and each time thunder slammed against Hal, though he saw no lightning.
The wind backed, then cut, and a flash of sunlight came through the clouds.
The wizard must be casting a counterspell against the storm conjuration.
The dark clouds that had raced overhead broke for certain, a sunny rift growing like a huge arrow over Paestum.
Then the wizard screamed. Hal jolted, saw the man stagger, hurl his grimoire high in the air in a spasm, tear at his robes.
Fire gouted from the tapers, took the two acolytes, curled like a living thing, and reached a red and black hand for the sorcerer.
He was shrieking, possibly a spell, but the fire-magic was stronger, taking him, and his body roared into flames. He pirouetted, fell, clawing at his body as it burnt.
Hal dove for his cover, out of sight, heard more screams, chanced peering out, saw all of the men on the parapet, soldiers and acolytes, writhe and die in agony.
Then the storm wind began once more.
The next day, at dawn, the Roche attacked.
They struck three times that day, with long ladders covered by archers sheltering in the ruins. Each time they were driven back, the last with cauldrons of boiling pitch.
All was quiet for two days, then Roche soldiers built a heavy wooden passageway to the walls. Flaming pitch was poured down to fire it, but the passage’s roof was covered with animal hides, constantly soaked with water.
It crept toward the part of the wall Hal was guarding, butted against it.
Dull thudding began, and word came—Roche was digging a mine under the wall to collapse it.
“Arright, you stumblebums, pay attention,” Sancreed Broda grated. The fifty soldiers were instantly silent.
Broda was a puzzlement, and a terror, to them all, officer to recruit. He was old, hard, with a scarred face and ropy-muscled body. He wasn’t a member of Hal’s cavalry unit, nor was he in uniform. He wore leather breeches so stiff with dirt they could have stood of their own accord, a yellow shirt that might have been white once, some time before the war started, and a leather jerkin even dirtier than his pants. On his feet were some sort of slippers, and a silk scarf was knotted around his long gray hair. He was armed with a hammer, and Hal had seen him use it twice on Roche who’d gotten to the top of “his” wall, grinning madly through yellow, rotting teeth.
No one knew why he was in charge, only that he was, and the gods help anyone who questioned that, although no one had seen him do anything worse than growl at the men under his command.
“This ’ere’s a real official docyment from our rulers, gods bless ’em and give ’em royal assaches,” Sancreed went on. “It’s got all kindsa praise for you lummocks, on account of you’re standin’ in the most dangerous spot in Paestum, the thin whatever-color-you-yoinks-are line between barb’rism an’ civilization, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. . . . I’m givin’ you the short version, ’cause we’ve got to figger out what to do next, ignorin’ these eejiots, ’less you feel like dyin’.
“Anyway, everybody’s real proud of you, for holdin’ firm, even with those friggin’ Roche diggin’ away under our feet.”
He stopped and, without realizing it, everyone listened. All heard the sound from below them of the Roche diggers.
“Now, what you’re s’posed to do, an’ everybody’ll think worlds of you, accordin’ to these royal farts back in th’ palace,” Broda said, his voice withering in scorn, “is go walkin’ back and forth atop th’ wall ’til the mine’s fired, then die real noble in the wreckage, keepin’ the Roche back ’til other troops drive ’em back.
“Heroes to a friggin’ man,” he sneered. “They’d prob’ly name boulevards after your dead young asses if we go an’ win this stupid damn war.
“Now, that ain’t gonna happen. There’ll be four volunteers up on the walls, making sure none of the bassids come up at us. That’s you, you, you and you. Get up those ramps.
“The rest of you are gonna pull back, into that old warehouse there. Out of th’ weather an’ all.
“When they put fire to their mine, you won’t be doin’ anything like gettin’ dead, but comin’ out after ’em. Maybe a bit of a su’prise for the bassids.
“’At’s fine. You officers can take charge of your troops, an’ get ’em under cover now. Half sleep. Get rested, get fed, ’cause I think it’ll get shitty in not too long.
“Yeah. One other thing. Four volunteers to listen for when th’ diggin’ stops. You, you, you and you. Follow me.”
Hal was one of the four. He obediently followed Broda into the base of the tower. The old man picked up a bundle of torches, used flint and steel to fire one, went down narrow, spider-webbed steps. There was dank stone all around Hal, and above him.
The sound of digging got louder.
“You wants to keep it quiet when you’re down here,” Broda said. “Mebbe th’ fools think they’re doin’ all this shit in silence, an’ we don’t know squat about what’s goin’ on.”
He snorted.
The steps ended in a small cellar. The thudding sounded like it was not quite below them, but very close.
“Right,” Broda said. “Here’s your posts. Two on, two off. You’re listenin’ for the diggin’ to stop. Like I told you afore, which you likely forgot, when they stop diggin’ is when they’ll be gettin’ ready, pullin’ back an’ firin’ their pit props an’ whatever other flam’bles packed in to collapse th’ tunnel an’ let th’ wall cave in atop.
“You’re to wait for that silence, an’ when it comes, haul ass outa here and find me. Don’t hang about, bein’ cute and waitin’ for th’ smell of smoke or like that.
“Nobody gets to play a godsdamned hero,” he grated, and Hal thought his eyes glowed in the darkness. “If you go and do something dumb like get killed, you’ll answer to me. Understand?”
For some reason, none of the four soldiers thought what Broda had said either absurd or stupid.
They waited for another day and a half. Hal swore that if he made it through this, he’d live in a tree or under a bush, and never go under a roof again, let alone this far underground, with the rats and people who wanted to kill him, deadly moles, digging ever closer.
He could have stayed in his village, become a miner, and died when a shaft collapsed around him if he wanted a fate like this, he thought.
He wasn’t meant for this. He was . . . well, he would be, a dragon flier. Let him live through this, let him at least die in the light of day. He thought of praying, couldn’t think of any particular god he believed in.
But his fellow listener evidently did, mumbling supplications to many gods, more than Hal thought a priest could honor.
Irritated, driven out of his own funk by the other, he kicked him and told him to shut up.
The other soldier, even younger than Hal, obeyed.
Hal was wondering how long it was until the end of their shift, when they could go up those stairs for a bowl of what everyone had started calling siege stew.
Quite suddenly, there was silence.
The two soldiers looked at each other, eyes wide against their smoke-darkened faces. His partner started for the stairs.
“Wait,” Hal hissed. “Maybe they’re only changing diggers.”
But the sound of picks and shovels didn’t come.
“The hells with you,” the other soldier snarled, and was gone.
Hal thought the other right, and went up the stairs behind him, into the spitting rain and dawn light, exulting that he had lived, would live, as long as he made it through the attack that would come.
They found Broda, who grunted, told them to wait, and went down the steps they’d boiled up.
A long time passed, and Broda came back into sight, trying to look as if he wasn’t in a hurry.
“’At’s right,” he said. “They’re comin’. You, boy. Go wake up th’ other so’jers and tell ’em to get ready.”
Two hours later, Hal was smelling smoke as the underground fire built, and then he heard a grinding sound, stones moving against each other.
The drawn-up soldiers moaned, without realizing it.
But Hal saw no sign of movement.
The smell grew stronger and the grinding came now and again.
“Look,” someone shouted, and everyone stared up, seeing the wall sway slightly.
“Awright,” Broda shouted. “It’ll be comin’ in a tit. Get y’selfs ready!”
The wall moved more, teetering inward, then with a grinding roar, toppled outward in a boil of dust and ricocheting stones. The wall was down, stones taller than a man bouncing away, sliding.
“Here they come!” someone shouted unnecessarily, and, stumbling over the high-piled rubble, coming toward them, was a wave of Roche infantrymen.
First were spearmen, archers behind.
Deraine bows twanged, and the archers dropped, fell back, but there were grim rows of men with swords behind them.
“Now!” Broda shouted, and Hal was moving forward, when his brain told him to run, that the points of those spears was death. One lunged at him, and he took the strike on his shield, pushed it out of the way as he numbly remembered someone telling him to do, and drove his sword into the Roche’s chest.
Then there was another man with a sword, and he parried, ducked, and kicked the man in the kneecap. The man screeched, bent, and Hal booted him out of the way, into another man’s spear.
There was a man pushing against him, chest against Hal’s shield, and he smelt foul breath, drove his knee up into the man’s crotch, killed him as he fell back.
Hal had his back against a high stone, and two men were coming at him, and then they were both down with arrows in their chests.
Hal didn’t know who to thank, saw Broda standing in a circle of bodies, hammer dripping blood.
Chanting came, high-pitched, and something grew out of nothing, a green-skinned demon, dripping slime, crouching, claws scraping the ground.
Someone screamed in terror, and Hal realized he was the one screaming. The demon looked about, pupilless eyes finding a victim, and it leapt toward Sancreed Broda.
The old man moved surprisingly fast, rolled aside, and struck up at the nightmare. It brushed his hammer aside, and claws ripped.
Broda howled in pain, chest torn open, tried for another smash, fell back, dead.
Hal Kailas felt that hard, cold rage build within him.
The demon looked for another target, saw Hal, just as Hal saw, beyond the fiend, a very young man with very long, very blond hair. He had no weapon but a wand, and his lips were moving as the wand moved, pointing at Kailas.
Just before the demon leapt, Hal, having all the time in the world, scooped up a fist-sized rock, and threw it at the magician’s head.
The man howled, clawed at the ruins of his face, wand flying away as the demon disappeared.
Hal jumped over a waist-high boulder, and drove his sword into the young wizard’s body.
A Roche warrior with a long two-handed sword was rushing him, and Hal braced. Before the man reached him an eerie wail began, and other apparitions, taller than a man, completely red, body a terrible parody of humanity, with scythelike claws at the ends of their arms and legs, appeared, leaping onto Roche soldiers and tearing at them.
The Roche soldiers paused, confused, terrified, and things that looked like hawks but weren’t dove out of nowhere, claws ripping.
The Roche soldiery broke, turned and ran, even as their wizards’ counterspell disappeared the red demons and hawks.
But panic had full hold on the Roche, and they didn’t stop or look back.
Charging past Hal came wave after wave of Derainian infantry, counterattacking, and he was pulled along with their attack, beyond the shattered walls, and cavalry galloped out of a city gate after the enemy.
Roche magic couldn’t recover the advantage, and the attackers were in full flight, through the ruined suburbs back toward their camps, and the siege was broken.
Hal stopped, letting the others run on, killing, pillaging the corpses.
It was not for him.
He turned back, to find Sancreed Broda’s body, and get someone to make a pyre. Somehow he knew there’d be no family, no friends to provide the last rites for the terrible old man who’d saved his and many other lives.
Above him, above Paestum’s shattered wall, a dragon screamed once, circling in the clean morning sky.
7
The ten horsemen rode at a walk into the glade below a forested hill. Hal made a swooping motion with his hand, then at the ground. Obediently, the other nine dismounted.
He pointed to two men, then to his right, two more to his left. They moved off to provide security for his flanks.
He chose one more, his normal second in command, a prematurely wizened city boy named Jarth Ordinay, and, taking a long ship’s glass from his saddlebag, crept up the hill toward the hill crest, hoping for no surprises.
There were no ambushers or wizards waiting.
He went on his hands and knees, and crawled into the heart of a clump of brush, through to the other side, Ordinay, well-trained, about five feet behind him. He had an arrow and a strung bow ready.
The hill rolled down, past a nearly dry stream to open fields that had been well tilled once, but were now choked with brambles.
The morning was hot, still, and the loudest thing the buzzing of a swarm of bees nearby.
Half a mile from Hal was the Roche army.
Its tents were struck, rolled into the baggage wagons, and men were forming up across its front. Behind the infantry, massed cavalry were trotting out toward the flanks.
Hal swept the breaking camp with his glass, found a handful of still-standing tents. There were banners in front of them. Hal read them easily. A year and a half in the cavalry had made him an expert at heraldry.
Duke this, Baron that, Lords the other and his brother, no surprise, seen them before during the campaign; then he started a bit, at one banner he’d never seen before.
It was, he was fairly sure, that of the queen of Roche herself. He couldn’t believe she’d decided to take the field, then saw, below the main banner, a longer pennant.
No. Not the queen, but some lord of her household.
That would be, assuming Deraine victory, almost as good.
That also meant that Roche had great hopes for the forthcoming battle.
He slithered back, out of the brush, motioned to Jarth, and they went back to the horses. The flank guards saw his return and, unordered, came back in.
“They’re just where the wizard said they’d be,” Hal whispered, reporting in the event he didn’t make it back to the main Deraine lines. “I’d guess ten, maybe fifteen thousand. Armored infantry, heavy cavalry, maybe a regiment of light cavalry.
“They’re getting ready for th
e march, headed west, again, like we expected.
“They’ve got flankers out, heavy cavalry, so we’d best skitter back home, for fear of getting pinchered.”
The men mounted. Their horses, as well trained as the men, had stayed still, rein-tethered.
Hal led them out of the glade, through the trees, into the open. Fifty yards distant was the ruins of a road.
“At the walk,” he said in a low voice, and the horses moved slowly toward the ruined byway.
In unknown territory, using any road, no matter how shattered, could be suicidal. But Hal had taken his patrol nearby less than an hour before, and thought it unlikely there’d been a trap laid in the interim.
He was more worried about being between the two armies—the Deraine army was only half a dozen miles distant.
One reason he’d survived since the siege of Paestum was staying as far away from famous battles as possible. That was why he’d been promoted to serjeant, and his troops called him Lucky behind his back.
When he took a patrol out, it was very seldom he didn’t bring everyone back, generally without serious wounds.
That was an uncommon boast for these times—after the siege, King Asir had brought a great army across the Chicor Straits, made alliance with Sagene’s Council of Barons, and gone after Queen Norcia’s army.
They found it, and the two forces smashed each other until they were both tottering, each unable to land the death blow.
They’d broken apart, brought in replacements during their winter quarters, and began skirmishing, each looking for the advantage rather than going toe-to-toe again.
There’d been half a dozen major battles, ten times that in minor brushes that produced no grander results than adding to the casualty lists in the eighteen months since Hal had been dragooned into the army.
One side would move south, the other after it, then the other way around.
