Dark Forge

by Miles Cameron

  He rode up the ridge to the sound of the Imperial March rolling like disciplined fire from the front line. By the time he dismounted, most of the other messengers had already returned, and he handed in his mount and rejoined the queue. The General waved at him, as if acknowledging the sound. It was slightly attenuated by distance in the second line, but still loud and clear.

  “Well,” said his one-time fighting companion, Klinos, “we’ve won the music contest.”

  All of the messengers laughed.

  From their position, it was easy enough to see the whole formation. The first line was almost entirely infantry—ten formations, all with gaps between them. The Yaniceri had slaves digging ditches in front of them. The Imperial troops stood easily under their pikes.

  In the second line, cavalry, mostly Attian, alternated with infantry, mostly militia from both Atti and the Empire. In the very centre, though, stood the General, and with her was a company of Imperial Axes, as well as her own Black Lobsters and the whole of the Imperial Nomadi. Just to her right stood the Capitan Pasha, with two large squadrons of magnificent Sipahis. In front of them was a large block of blue-coated men with big helmets and huge pole axes.

  Just behind the second line, Attian slaves and Imperial engineers were digging like ants. Aranthur watched a dozen grooms move the messengers’ horses as an engineer ran a rope line right through the former picket line. Even as the grooms hurried to move the horses, a wagon began dropping pre-woven gabions like empty baskets at intervals.

  “Lady, give me two more hours,” the General said. “Right then. Everyone mount. On me, now.”

  The General suited her action to her words, and vaulted onto the back of her monster. It gave one curvet and settled, and she trotted to the left, down off the little hillock and onto the slope of the ridge.

  Instantly a pair of engineers, stripped to their shirts, began to drive stakes into the ground. Artillerists appeared with picks and spades.

  “Doesn’t she have messages for us?” Aranthur asked.

  Klinos shrugged. “I’ve never seen a battle like this. But usually after the message sticks are handed out and opened, we sit and get lectures on warfare.”

  “But there’s nothing to do!”

  “Be lucky she doesn’t make us dig,” Ringkoat said. “She has, afore this.”

  “She’s won many battles?” Aranthur asked.

  Ringkoat croaked a laugh. “You know what Roaris calls her, eh? The General who never won a battle.” He shrugged, his massive muscles raising the armoured shoulders a handspan. “She’s never fought a real battle. But she’s studied them all her life.” He looked out over the plain. “Truth is, no one in the Empire has done this—on this scale—in five generations.”

  “That’s…” Aranthur couldn’t think of a useful thing to say.

  “Exactly. Look. Here they come.”

  Over the far ridge came a rustle and a glitter, and even a mile away, the ground seemed to rustle.

  “That’s a lot of people,” Ringkoat said after a few minutes had passed.

  “Quite enough of everything to give us a warm day’s work,” the General said. “Well, there’s one question answered,” she went on.

  “What’s that?” Ringkoat asked.

  The General nodded. “They’re going to fight. By now they must know that Atti isn’t in a state of civil war, about to collapse. But hells, maybe they believe their own propaganda. We all usually do.”

  “Maybe they just think they can win a straight up fight,” Ringkoat said.

  “That’s my hope, Coryn.” The General watched the movement of her enemy, and then shook her head. “They’re not waiting. Where are my gonnes?”

  No one spoke.

  “Timos. Master Gonner. Time until she can open fire.”

  Aranthur got a foot into the stirrup. Ringkoat all but threw him over the saddle.

  “Top of the little hill we just left. Red velvet coat, stupid looking wig,” the Jhugj said.

  Aranthur rode off. It was a short canter. The woman in question was obvious: thin as a rail, her red velvet coat filthy, her wig like a stage witch’s hair.

  “General Tribane wants to know how long until you can open fire?” he asked.

  “Tell Myr Tribane that if she’d have allowed me to dig in last night, we’d have had rounds in the tubes ten minutes ago!” the woman shouted.

  A heavy gonne was rolling forward into a shallow pit at the brow of the round hillock. Three gonnes were already in place, with fascines that were being filled even as the gonnes were traversed.

  A very young woman sprinted forward, the weight of a heavy cannonball apparently nothing to her. A big man took the ball. Behind him, two others opened a parchment cartridge and pushed the contents down the wide mouth of the bronze drake.

  A clod of turf followed the powder, and then the ball.

  “Ready number four,” called a Byzas voice.

  “Tell her nibs I’ll be firing in…” The woman glanced at a kuria-powered device. “Two minutes.”

  “Thanks. Two minutes,” Aranthur said, and he was going back down to where the General waited.

  A servant took his horse; he sketched a bow.

  “One minute from now,” he said.

  She was watching the plain.

  A whole line of shambling infantry were coming down the opposite ridge. They were still half a mile away, and they were slow.

  “Magi,” the General said.

  A short, portly older man stood up.

  “Give me a close look at that infantry line,” she said.

  The Magos spread his hands and cast. Aranthur felt the saar going into the winds of chaos and being written on reality; he almost understood it. He knew the working, admired the ease with which the man cast the Eye of the Gods.

  A wedge of air in front of the General changed shape, oscillating.

  “Sweet Light and bitter Darkness,” the General cursed.

  Aranthur was close enough behind her to see what she saw. A line of women and children.

  “Lady,” he swore.

  “Finer resolution,” the General said. “Track left. Now right. Eagle almighty. Subjugated?”

  “Working,” said the Magos.

  Aranthur noted that there were six men and women seated on camp stools. He didn’t know any of them. He assumed they were the Empire’s much vaunted Polemagi. The Battle Magi.

  “Dorotea!” the General snapped.

  “This,” said the portly man. He didn’t appear to do anything.

  A short woman stood up. She tossed a working with a rapid fluidity that Aranthur could only admire again. It was a heavy, complex working, but it went like a whip.

  Just to the left of the enemy centre, the long, thick line of stumbling women and children came unravelled.

  “I took out their subjugation,” the short woman said.

  “What the hell is that?” another of the Magi asked.

  As a few hundred of the rail-thin women ran, they revealed a tall figure swathed in scarlet. Before anyone could comment, though, a barrage of red balefire fell into the shields and burned through them in two places. The portly man fell, gasping. Before he was all the way to the ground, there was a soft, sloppy pop. The rush of air, the heat, and the smell of burnt soap told of a massive release of sorcery, and the sihr rolled away, black as death.

  Aranthur’s face was suddenly warm and wet. He wiped blood off his face. The portly man was dead, his head exploded from some terrible puissance that Aranthur hadn’t even felt.

  Above him and to the right, the first gonne fired.

  The distance viewing spell was gone, dead with its caster.

  Another line appeared behind the first, this one not shambling.

  “I need a view,” the General spat. “That’s cavalry. The infantry isn’t a serious attack—it’s slaves being driven forward to demoralise us. Timos! Tell the Master Gonner to concentrate on the cavalry.”

  A third caster left his camp chair.


  “Someone shield us. Lady, you lot have practised all this, have you not?”

  “Agathur… was our best…” the third caster muttered.

  Still, even as Aranthur put his foot into his stirrup—his own beloved Ariadne, he noticed—he saw the new man raise a viewing lens as a fourth caster evinced a pale, glowing aspis over the whole command position.

  Aranthur rode out from under it. He cantered up the hill again to the Master Gonner.

  All the gonnes were silent.

  “The General says to fire on the cavalry, not the infantry screen,” Aranthur said.

  “She needs to make up her mind. She just told me to cease fire.” She waved a broken message stick.

  Below them, just two hundred paces away, a series of lights and explosions played across the pale golden aspis.

  Aranthur was confused, and he didn’t like the play of sihr, the more violent magikal power, on the shield. His confusion passed through his hips to Ariadne, who began to fret.

  “I’ll ride back and confirm the order,” he said.

  The Master Gonner spoke into her stick. Aranthur heard the sharp tone of the General in her reply.

  “She says cease fire,” the woman said. “All in a rush to get my gonnes up, and then tells me to sit silent.”

  Aranthur saluted and rode down the hill. The flow of sihr was less; he timed two attacks and rode through the shield in the next interval.

  Another of the Magi was down, burned black.

  “Well?” the General snapped. “Timos? Why are our gonnes silent?”

  Aranthur was dismounting; a groom whisked Ariadne away and out of the golden aspis.

  All the Magi were on their feet. Aranthur could feel the incoming attack. He felt how the enemy caster had built a rhythm, a tempo, like a swordsman setting up a deception, and now…

  All that in far less than a heartbeat. Aranthur reached out, put a hand on one of the Magi, and passed a steady pulse of power through him into the shield. He knew a lot more about channelling than he had known when he let Iralia pull power from him until he was saar-sick. He pushed the power; it flowed, all in the tempo of the attack.

  The aspis went black, and then, slowly, recovered to pale gold.

  “Dahlia!” he called.

  “On it.” She stepped in among the Magi. So did Prince Ansu.

  “Sophia, wise and true,” whispered the Magas. “Thanks, youngsters.”

  The General was looking through the viewer.

  “Timos, why have my gonnes stopped firing?” she repeated.

  She seemed not to know that they’d just barely survived a massive magikal assault.

  “Ma’am, you ordered the Master Gonner to cease fire.”

  Her head snapped around. “I what?”

  “You ordered the…”

  Timos was more anxious about the General’s palpable anger than about the tempo of magikal attacks.

  “I told you to order her to put fire on the cavalry,” the General spat.

  “I told her that, ma’am. But she spoke through her message stick and…”

  The General whirled. “Fuck.” She raised a gold message stick. “Vanax Kunyard.”

  There was a crackle and an indistinct sound.

  “Kunyard, report.”

  More indistinct crackle.

  “Timos, on me.” She turned to her groom. “Horse.”

  In moments the two of them were mounted. Aranthur followed the General, on one of her own messenger horses, as they rode further to the left, along the second line.

  Vanax Kunyard’s command group had two layers of shields over it. Aranthur’s instant summary was that Kunyard had a better battle magik staff than the General, for whatever reason.

  Kunyard was a big man; he was on horseback, and he saluted with a baton. By his side was the Pennon Malconti, in full armour. Malconti raised an eyebrow at Aranthur.

  “Vanax. Message me.”

  Kunyard shrugged and raised a silver stick. He spoke into it.

  Nothing emerged from the General’s gold stick.

  “Destroy it. The enemy have our codes.”

  The General’s voice had developed a pinched sound, as if she was angry at the whole world.

  Kunyard cursed, and broke the stick in his hand in a dozen pieces.

  “Messenger only, then,” he said. “That’ll be slow and clumsy.”

  “Least of our problems,” the General said. “Their Ars Magika is better than ours. How the fuck can that be?” She shook her helmeted head. “Never mind that. I need you to outflank those flanking columns—”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday, Alis.”

  The two smiled at each other like old friends, or sparring partners.

  Below them on the long slope, the first line was waiting. The enemy line of infantry, whether slaves or not, was plodding down their own hill. They would have to cross a very small stream, mostly just damp ground.

  “Timos, on me.”

  Together they swept along the second line, informing each commander that the coded message system was compromised.

  “Go to the pasha,” she ordered. “Tell my gonnes to start firing!” she yelled as he rode away.

  Aranthur rode across the back of the second line. He delivered the message to the Master Gonner. She tossed her message sticks on the ground in disgust and started yelling orders. Aranthur was already gone, angling up the ridge to where he could see the pasha and his magnificent Sipahis.

  Behind him, the gonnes began with a crashing salvo. Twenty big gonnes were incredibly loud, firing in a rolling volley; smoke billowed out over the ridge. Aranthur tried to watch the fall of the shot, and could not, but he saw the long, thick line of enemy cavalry ripple.

  A pulse of red fire flashed out of the centre of the enemy ridge and fell on the gonnes. There was a flash, and the gonnes began to fire again. Someone had defeated the enemy spell—Aranthur had no idea who.

  He tore his eyes away from the battle and rode up the ridge to the pasha. The pasha dropped his message sticks into the dust with a look of disgust and spoke in rapid, musical Armean to one of his own long-robed Magi.

  “Tell the General I will have my own barakas attack the enemies,” he said. “We can’t just wait for them to cut us apart.”

  Aranthur heard the Magos say, in Armean, “He is very strong, Effendi.”

  “Hit him, Hakim.”

  Aranthur wondered, given that he was only a third-year Academy student, why all the army’s Magi were not in a single choir, for maximum effect. But his thoughts were swept away by the sheer spectacle of the battle that lay before him, as his position on the ridge gave him the full panorama.

  To the left and right, heavy columns of enemy cavalry, shining horses and glittering steel, swept to envelop his army. In the centre, the long, slow advance of the thick ribbon of enemy infantry was backed by six big blocks of cavalry.

  From near the very top of the opposing ridge, light sparkled. And death fell on the first line—thin, distant screams, and flashes of light where local casters and amulets countered some of the effectiveness of the adversary.

  Aranthur thought of fighting against the Servant in the Square of the Mulberry Trees—of the success of his thrown sword in a fight otherwise entirely conducted in the Aulos. He leant forward, and urged his messenger horse to a gallop. One more time he raced up the hill that dominated the artillery position.

  “You again?” the Master Gonner asked.

  “Ma’am. You see that sparkle?”

  Aranthur pointed, and the Master Gonner called for a viewer and looked.

  In the magikal viewer, the area looked as if it was bathed in a thick ivory light. Nothing distinct could be seen.

  “That’s the focal point of their buvu attacks,” Aranthur said, using all his languages, trying to get his point across. “The zori magik. The sihr.”

  “The General wants me to switch fire?” the Master Gonner asked.

  Aranthur shook his head. “No, ma’am. It is my own observa
tion.”

  Another line of red fire fell on the first line. And the enemy infantry line was crossing the bottom of the valley.

  But the Master Gonner was nodding.

  “I’m willing to give it a try. Betha! Look lively. Ranging shot—”

  “If you try the range, he’ll get his shields up,” Aranthur said. “I’m a Magos—I am not making this up.”

  A green and gold casting from behind them—the pasha’s choir. It passed like a beam of sunlight on a cloudy day.

  The response was immediate: an explosion of ruby light, and a single white beam.

  “Got it,” said one of the gonners.

  Two men were moving the trail of one of the bronze monsters while Betha tracked her target by eye.

  “There--dyce. Ready, gonne three.”

  “Ready one!”

  “Ready seven!”

  “Ready four!”

  “All together!” the Master Gonner roared. “And—!”

  Linstocks went up all over the position.

  “Fire!”

  All the linstocks went down. Most of the gonnes had quill primers in their vents, and they all went off together. A few, more old-fashioned gonners set fire directly to the excess powder atop the touch hole. Two brand new Imperial gonnes had flintlocks that fired immediately, faster than the linstock-lit gonnes. The whole salvo took about four beats of Aranthur’s heart to fire.

  Aranthur watched the far-off point on the enemy ridge, but there was no apparent effect. The Master Gonner ordered a second salvo while Aranthur remounted and rode down to where the General had mounted her unicorn at the head of the Black Lobsters. Dahlia and Ansu were maintaining shields with the short Magas and her single remaining partner, a nondescript man in the brown robe of a priest of Aploun. There were a number of corpses in the command position. Two of the messengers were down, and four Magi, and one of the grooms.

  Another messenger galloped in behind Aranthur.

  “Timos?” the General asked.

  “Pasha says his Magi will target the enemy magisters,” he said. “He destroyed his message sticks. The Master Gonner is trying the enemy magisters too.”

  “Best news I’ve heard all morning,” the General said. “Jennie?” she called.

  Primas Jeninas was sliding off her mount.

  “Ma’am, he’s fucking withdrawing.”