Dark Forge

by Miles Cameron

  “What?” General Tribane, who had kept a fairly mild demeanour up to now, snapped. She flushed red. “What in ten thousand iron hells?”

  “Vanax Roaris says he is withdrawing the third line, and recommends that you extricate yourself. From what he calls ‘Tribane’s disaster.’” Jeninas was red with anger. “I spoke my mind, ma’am. He told me to fuck off, in just so many words. Ma’am, he says he is not now, nor has ever been, your subordinate, and he’s exercising his independent command.”

  General Tribane stood in silence for as long as it might take a child to count to three. Above them, the gonnes fired another salvo. No red fire had fallen on the front line; Aranthur had a feeling, a hunch, that the pasha’s Magos, or perhaps the gonnes, had won them a respite.

  “Well,” Tribane said.

  Aranthur had seen his father do the same: shrug off bad news and go on with the work. It was a very special type of courage. She glanced around, winced at the flickering shields above her, and pointed.

  “The Second line must advance,” the General said forcefully. “If we retire, we lose a generation of our citizens.” She pointed at the militia infantry in the front. “Kunyard better know what he’s doing out on the left. Now I have nothing to send him.”

  “Klinos! Go to Vanax Kunyard. Tell him to go for the cavalry column to his left front. If he can spare Malconti, send the Pennon to support the left of the… The Second Dacan and Fourth Arnaut and the Twenty-third City. Understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The nobleman mounted a horse and he was away, his mount’s hooves raising dust.

  “Tarkas—no, I need you here. Timos. Back to the pasha. Tell him we’re moving to support our infantry line and he might want to do the same. Make it sound nice, but it’s an order.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Sasan, Master Gonner and then down to Vanax Silva. Tell her to withdraw one hundred paces.”

  Ringkoat shook his head. “Ma’am, the Yaniceri have dug in. They can’t withdraw.”

  “Fuck,” the General said.

  That was the last that Aranthur heard. He was already mounted. His legs were tired, his hips stiff, and it was not yet breakfast time in Megara. If he was home, he might just be purchasing quaveh for the Master of Arts.

  The Pasha had moved two hundred paces to the right. Aranthur rode past a row of dead Sipahis and at least one of the pasha’s staff, horribly burned. One man’s katir was bent like a melting candle in the skeletal claw of his desiccated hand.

  Aranthur’s eyes passed over the horror and he reined in amid the pasha’s staff.

  “Lord of Glory.”

  He saluted the pasha. He hoped he remembered the phrase correctly from a poem.

  The pasha smiled. “You are a charming barbarian.”

  “Myr Tribane is throwing our cavalry at the left-hand horn of their attack.”

  “And she hopes I’ll do the same? I concur.” The pasha nodded.

  “We are moving up to support our first line.”

  The pasha shrugged. “My Yaniceri need no support. Not against that rabble.” He leant forward. “One of my grooms says that your Vanax Roaris is… hmmm. Farther away? Than he was before. Leaving my Prince Atbey sitting with my reserve Ghulami and no friends, eh? Do I need to know something, young knight?”

  Aranthur had no idea what the proper response was.

  “I… have no orders on this matter.”

  “Eh. Well, I would like a report. Tell the General, if Roaris is withdrawing, we are in deep trouble, and allies talk about these things.” The pasha’s eyes were hard. “I have just lost a good friend. Tell the General that we should meet. In fifteen minutes, I think. As soon as I have seen the cavalry fight begin.”

  He turned and began to rattle orders, and his own messengers began to ride away to his right flank cavalry.

  Aranthur assumed that he was dismissed, and rode for the centre. His horse was fresh; the long string of messenger remounts made sense. He galloped across the back of the second line. Now there were stray bolts of power striking around the second line. A line of red passed over him before he could raise an aspis and moved on, burning a black line into the sandy soil and the summer grass.

  The first line was about to engage.

  Aranthur rode up. The General had also moved. She’d gone down the ridge three hundred paces, and most of the cavalry to her left was gone.

  Half a mile off to the left, there was a rising column of golden yellow dust.

  The gonnes fired.

  Aranthur slid from his mount; a groom took the gelding, and Aranthur bowed. He repeated the pasha’s message while the thickset Magas adjusted the General’s expanded magikal view of the first line.

  The view passed across the Third City Regiment.

  The two sleeves of musketeers stood ready in front of the block of pikes. Just beyond them, several hundred thin, hungry looking women and children shuffled to a stop perhaps forty paces from the levelled muskets. The view was so clear that Aranthur could see the minute snakes of smoke rising from the burning matchcords of the musketeers.

  “Fire,” whispered the General.

  But the Third held its fire as the women and children shuffled slowly forward, despairing eyes down.

  “Fire for the love of the Lady,” the General said.

  But the militia shuffled, and looked at each other. An officer went out from the musketeers, hands extended. They couldn’t hear what he had to say, but his open arms spoke for him.

  Aranthur felt the casting. So did Ansu, whose head snapped around. So did Dahlia, massaging her golden aspis.

  In the viewer, the thin figures transformed from victims to predators. And they dashed forward like hungry wolves on a weakened prey.

  They were only twenty paces from the musketeers.

  “Lady, no,” the General said.

  Some of the musketeers fired, silent blooms of smoke from their muskets showing that their resolve had cracked. Others held their fire—altruism, or shock, or horror. A few of the scarecrow wolves fell, but not enough.

  The musketeers broke. Many were too slow, and they died in a red haze of dust and blood, the blows of their suddenly galvanised foes too rapid to follow. But more did as they had been taught, and ran for the cover of their pikes, a few paces behind, rolling in under the protection of the long shafts.

  The pikes were as surprised as the musketeers had been. In several places, panicked musketeers burst straight into the formation, forcing their comrades to raise the lethal pike heads so as not to impale a friend, a son, a sister.

  The human wolves were only a pace or two behind, running their prey. They flowed into the cracks and crevices in the pike block, and the whole block began to shred, the formation collapsing back.

  Down the ridge, at the point from which the women and children had started their assault, there stood a single, scarlet-clad wraith. The Exalted waited with patience, arms crossed. Aranthur watched the red figure, even as the pikes fell back.

  Then the red robes whirled, and the still figure became a streak, almost impossible to follow. It accelerated through the surviving fringe of musketeers—two knots of men and women fighting desperately and hopelessly—and left a mist of blood in its wake. In each hand, the figure had a sword of white light. When the scarlet streak went into the pike block down an alley created by the feral children…

  The Third City died. Fifteen hundred prosperous, well-trained, well-equipped grocers and leather-workers and cutlers and paper makers; apprentices and journeywomen and masters; nobles and commons.

  As the General watched, unable to tear her eyes away, they died.

  2

  Eastern Armea

  As Aranthur watched in horror, the Third City died.

  The line of women and children struck the whole front line. The Third was not the only regiment overcome, unable to respond. The General put a hand to her mouth as the magikal viewer swept along the front line.

  “Lady,” she breathed
.

  But the disaster was not mirrored everywhere. Almost at their feet, the First Regiment, the road surveyors and engineers of the regular army, fired a crashing volley at point-blank range into the oncoming line of apparent captives. They had a fraction of time to appreciate what had happened to their left, to the Third City. An officer ordered the volley, and the regular soldiers obeyed. The volley smashed the women. The survivors went forward and were met by the second volley from the rear two ranks, firing like a clockwork automaton. The whole sleeve withdrew into the forest of pikes as if they were on parade. No scarlet streak eventuated; perhaps a gonne, or a dozen musket balls, had ended it.

  To the right, a Yaniceri regiment failed to break the charge. They fought for their lives at the edge of their trench, hand to hand with a rabble of enhanced peasants and not one but two of the red horrors. To their right, another Yaniceri regiment stood their ground, shot down their opponents and then charged, clearing their front, ruthlessly butchering the survivors. On the far right, repeated magikal attacks had already decimated an elite Yaniceri regiment, and it was broken. Worse, in their flight, they panicked the Ulaman militia above them on the ridge, and they ran without firing a shot. On the far left, too, several Imperial regiments shared the fate of the Third: farmers from Bagas died in a scarlet mist. A regiment of artists and fishmongers, weakened by an hour’s pounding from the enemy sorcerers, broke when it was charged, was run down and massacred.

  The General watched. Beyond the enemy “infantry” were big squadrons of cavalry—well armoured, on fine horses. They were manoeuvring, preparing to exploit the portions of the first line that had collapsed.

  “I was wrong,” the General said. “The infantry was the real attack. It’s all fucking real, and they have our communications and they have superior magikal support.”

  “Their magik hasn’t launched a tangible attack in the real for some time,” Dahlia said.

  The General shook her head.

  “I hear you, Myr Tarkas, but I think we’re in a different phase. Our enemy has a playbook. We’re fighting a doctrine.”

  The gonnes fired, a timed ripple. All twenty gonnes fired at the mass of enemy cavalry in front of them. The results were spectacular, and Aranthur could see, even five hundred paces away, the chaos in the enemy ranks.

  “I need time. Time that can only be bought by heroism. Timos—first line. Find Vanax Silva. Prepare for cavalry. Tell her I’m coming. Tell her to hold.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Aranthur tried not to think that Sasan had not returned from his earlier mission.

  He mounted yet another horse, and leant forward. The First had its musketeers back out. They fired a volley into the gruesome horde that appeared to be feeding on the dead of the Third City. A knot of the enemy broke away from the last stand around the Third colours and began to lope towards the First.

  Aranthur slipped off to the right, towards the melee where the Yaniceri were still struggling to clear their ranks of their adversaries. Half a company of the First’s musketeers stood, muskets primed, in an agony of indecision.

  Aranthur galloped in behind them. He found Vanax Silva on horseback under the First’s great blue and silver standard—a flag so old that some people worshipped it and the gilded eagle at the top of the staff. Aranthur automatically made the Eagle sign.

  “Myr Tribane says, prepare for cavalry, and, she is coming,” he panted.

  He pointed into the dust. Down here, nothing much could be seen more than fifty paces away.

  Silva shook her head.

  “If the Attians go down, I’m fucked anyway. Screw the cavalry—that’s a problem for later.” She turned to the Arnaut centark. “Iskander! Take the… musketeers. Help the Attians.”

  The Arnaut officer drew a magnificent blue and gold kilij. He trotted his horse to the waiting body of musketeers.

  “Draw your swords!” he roared.

  The regulars had swords, and bucklers too. They dropped their heavy matchlocks and pressed together.

  “Coming, brother?” the officer asked in Souliote.

  Aranthur drew his long sword. It warmed in his hand. As it had been the morning of his first duel, he found himself curiously eager, carried away on a tide of his own excitement.

  Ahead of them was the flank of the dying Yaniceri regiment. There were two obvious eddies in the fighting, and in the middle of both, through the dust, Aranthur could see scarlet.

  The other Arnaut grinned.

  “That’s the spirit, brother,” he said. “Let’s go!”

  The clump of musketeers jogged forward. It wasn’t a charge, because they were entering a confused fight, but as soon as they made contact they changed the engagement. Tired Yaniceri gained heart.

  Until they reached the first scarlet vortex. Aranthur was among the first. He cut at a woman who was swinging a tulwar with both hands, and behind her was the Exalted. He’d seen one in the skirmish, two days before, and he thought he had an answer.

  But he miscalculated, and then he was on his back, on the ground, and his horse was dead, its two front legs cut clean off by a white scythe of power. Aranthur’s leg was pinned under his fallen mount’s weight, and he felt as if his left hip was smashed. The glowing red thing looked at him and moved on. Almost too fast to see, it turned and killed the Arnaut officer and two veteran Imperial musketeers. Its blinding white weapons cut through bucklers and armour, swords and limbs, so that it never had to stop moving.

  Aranthur reached inside, found the fire, and wrote on reality.

  Enhancement flowed through him. He wrenched his leg from under his dead mount in a faster tempo and the battle around him seemed to slow to crawl. A Yaniceri took his death blow in agonising hesitation, his last exhalation prolonged like the climax of an aria. One of the regular musketeers managed to stay alive against the tide of women slashing at him. Their slashes were in Aranthur’s time, now, while the musketeer’s parry seemed sluggish. He flowed to his feet, accelerating into a higher phase. He was, indeed, with the gods. He found his sword and picked it up in the same tempo as the Exalted gutted another musketeer with a rising sweep of its left sword of light.

  Aranthur went at the scarlet killer.

  It turned.

  Operating in the same tempo as the red storm gave Aranthur the chance to really see it. It was tall—taller than a man—and androgynous, with pale skin spattered in blood, white hair tied in a tight queue, now soaked in gore, and a white mask, and elaborate lines of tattoos like jewellery on wrists and neck.

  Aranthur put his sword behind him, in a deceptive guard his master favoured against an unknown opponent. He had never faced anything quite so completely “unknown.”

  The blood-soaked assassin turned and faced him.

  It was obviously surprised. In the moment of its hesitation, Aranthur closed the measure, lifting his foot to avoid the entrails of a dying Yaniceri. The thing tracked him, as if time had stopped.

  But it hadn’t. One of the musketeers shot it. She was only three paces away. Her weapon seemed to come up with glacial slowness, but the Exalted’s entire attention was fixated on Aranthur.

  The musket ball tore away its jaw.

  Aranthur struck. He was perfectly aware that his sword wouldn’t parry one of the bars of white fire, but he was who he was, and he was at his measure with a sword in his hand and the power of surprise. His point came up from behind his right side, edge first.

  Yes said a woman’s voice in his head.

  And then, as if in joy, “Now we are revealed.”

  The Exalted stumbled, and got its right arm up, cutting straight at Aranthur’s head.

  His sword crossed the bar of light…

  And held it.

  His sword burned a brilliant blue. He was blinded, stunned, but not as stunned as his adversary, who fell back a step.

  Aranthur’s body acted without him, his wrist turning, his deceptive cut rolling off the heavy cross. It was not a matter of thought. He never thought it.


  The Exalted’s right hand fell to the ground, cleanly severed.

  A mortally wounded Yaniceri cut its hamstrings from behind with a hooked knife.

  Even with two death wounds, the Exalted whirled. Falling, it beheaded the Yaniceri left-handed. It tried to reach Aranthur but it was down, its left leg unable to support it.

  Aranthur cut off the left arm with a simple cut, and the white swords went out.

  Even in his massively enhanced time, Aranthur saw the focus on the face of the musketeer who had shot the thing, and he turned.

  The second Exalted.

  It came for him. As if called. Summoned.

  Aranthur felt the kuria crystal on his chest grow warm, as if he had cast saar.

  This time, there was no pause in the tempo. Both swords reached for him.

  He covered. Again, his old, heavy sword burned like a brilliant blue-white diamond lit by a volcano. He made both parries.

  While they crossed, someone shot them with a puffer. The ball passed through Aranthur’s coat, although he didn’t know it until later, and struck the Exalted.

  It attacked again.

  It only seemed to know how to attack.

  Aranthur was trying to process everything, from his own fear to the sheer lethality of the white swords and his own, which seemed to have no remedy except themselves; nothing seemed to tangle or stop them. A missed parry was death. Even his own sword looked as if it would kill him if it touched him, and none of that was conscious thought.

  Aranthur rotated the thing, backed to avoid the second blade, and struck into its attack, because it moved in a false tempo, leading with a step like a novice swordsman. His back-cut left it without hands, and its fantastical speed could not save it from a wave of enraged musketeers and Yaniceri, who tore it down like hyaenas on a kill.

  Aranthur had time to realise that he couldn’t really communicate with them. He was too far enhanced.

  He ran to the front of the melee, but with the Exalted down, the Yaniceri were mastering their position.

  He looked up at the enemy ridge, and saw the enemy cavalry through the dust. They were closer.