Dark Forge

by Miles Cameron

It was very difficult to read them. His own tempo was so much faster than the mortal tempo that he couldn’t immediately decide if they were standing still or coming forward.

  Aranthur turned, and passed his now ordinary sword through a very young boy with a spear. And then, with gritted teeth, he hamstrung a woman facing a Yaniceri with nothing but a stick. The Attian killed her.

  Aranthur’s tempo made every one of these actions murder, not combat. The Safian women and children were not nearly as enhanced as he was himself, as if their numbers attenuated even the Enemy’s spell effect, and he could kill them so easily…

  So easily…

  He killed a dozen before he couldn’t make himself kill another.

  He stood, in the middle of a desperate fight, unable and unwilling to simply murder women and children who were probably both Subjugated and Enhanced.

  Nor was he willing to watch the Yaniceri and the musketeers die. He trapped some weapons from behind. Then he had to watch as his allies slowly butchered his helpless victims.

  He wanted to retch.

  Instead, he turned and ran at the enemy cavalry, who were preparing to charge. They were close—perhaps waiting for an order, perhaps hesitating at the trench.

  He burst into their midst out of the haze of dust, and he was the nightmare. He released all his anger and his disgust at murdering children and women on them, but it was still murder. He flowed through them, and they died. He could kill a man and then kill the man behind him before the first victim’s severed head struck the ground.

  The horses, wiser than their masters, panicked. Three hundred veteran cavalry fled, leaving a dozen of their brothers in the dust. He stood alone, and the sword burned like blue-white fire in his hand.

  He released his will on the enhancement and he almost fell. His legs felt as if he’d run a dozen parasangs and his shoulders ached.

  But the Yaniceri had cleared their trench and were meticulously killing the wounded. The surviving musketeers were huddled by the body of their centark.

  He began to walk back towards his own side. It wasn’t very far, but it seemed to take him forever, and he felt as if he was walking in glue.

  “How’d you do that, syr?” asked one of the regulars.

  Aranthur stood, breathing so hard he thought his ribs might crack. The next thing he knew, he was walking again, one hand across the shoulders of a regular dekark, stumbling across the upcast of the Attian trench and then, all but sobbing with fatigue, being carried into the solid square of the First’s pikes.

  An Imoter leant over him and he was lying on the ground. Nothing made sense—he couldn’t seem to put events into a sequence…

  “I’m not hurt…” he muttered.

  “That’s an interesting theory,” the Imoter said.

  He ran his hands over Aranthur’s left arm, and Aranthur felt the man’s saar.

  His entire left sleeve was sodden in blood. He saw that he was cut so deeply that something pale glistened at the bottom of the cut as the Imoter held it open. The pain was…

  Aranthur came back to the surface of reality with no idea of how much time had passed. He sat up, and realised that he was lying on the grass, and there were ants, and in front of him a line of pikemen.

  His left arm was heavily bandaged. He felt as if he’d been clubbed, or as if he was wrapped in wet cloth; everything seemed sluggish, even sound.

  With real difficulty, he clambered to his feet. He had to concentrate, and he failed on his first attempt. In the end, he had to put one hand out, roll on his side, and get his right knee under him, like a drunk rising in some reeking alley. He was so hungry he couldn’t really focus on anything else.

  There were twenty or thirty other bodies lying on the dry grass. Everything smelt of sulphur and the acrid tang of saar, and the burnt-soap smell of sihr, as his mother had once said.

  The light itself seemed grey.

  Dust rolled over him, coming from in front. The sound of the forge of war—close, personal war—beat into his ears like the sound of a blacksmith’s hammer shoeing a horse, multiplied a thousand times.

  All around him, the pikes of the First regiment, locked in a tight square, faced a cloud of racing horsemen—dark-clad Pindaris, light horse with no particular allegiance but to loot. They circled just beyond the points of the pikes, throwing javelins and occasionally trying to close. The clouds of dust they raised from the hard-packed soil were obscuring the sun.

  The First had lost most of its musketeers saving the Yaniceri. It could only endure, although a handful of survivors loaded and fired as quickly as their weapons allowed.

  All this, Aranthur took in with a glance. Even in his current state, he understood the deadlock.

  Vanax Silva glanced down at him from her warhorse.

  “Glad to see you back with us, dekark.”

  She was watching the Pindari horse; her glance conveyed interest, but not much concern.

  “I wonder if I should return to the General,” Aranthur asked.

  The Vanax smiled. “I don’t think you’d make it very far, just now. In a few moments, I expect these thieves to be gone.”

  To their left, a party of armoured cavalry tried to break into the square—not Pindaris but better armed men, in full maille. But the pikemen baffled them, and their horses wouldn’t close. When one brave man pressed into the pikes, a dekark killed him with a spear. Aranthur drew his sword, ready to sell his life dearly, but the pikemen around him looked more bored than grim. Aranthur noted that his sword had returned to being perfectly normal. Old, heavy, and sharp.

  “Be easy, syr,” one muttered. “Unless they bring up big gonnes or a Magos, they can’t touch the likes o’ we.”

  Aranthur realised with a sense of unreality that it was the dekark from the road surveying party, who clearly did not recognise him.

  Out in the dust, there was a mighty rumble. The earth, already vibrating from the hooves of a thousand Pindari ponies, suddenly shook as if the mountains were moving.

  The Pindari cavalry vanished like mist on a sunny morning. Suddenly Aranthur could see plumed horsemen everywhere, on both sides of the pikes: magnificent Attian Sipahis on big horses, with plumes on their helmets and horses’ heads—scarlet and orange, blue and green and lavender. They thundered by and left silence in their wake, and more dust.

  The front ranks of pikes, who’d held their weapons horizontal for far too long, allowed their pike heads to slump to the ground. Kneeling men and women rose with groans.

  The dekarks ordered the pikes erect when it was clear that the threat was gone.

  The First’s lines were still crisp, and through the dust, the Yaniceri were still lining the edge of their trench. They gave a cheer.

  The First answered the cheer.

  “Dekark?” asked the vanax. “The General’s right over there. I haven’t got a horse to give you, but you might catch her.” The commander reached down and handed him a small flask. “Drink this. It’ll put hair on your chest.” She laughed.

  Aranthur took a swig, and felt immediately refreshed.

  The vanax smiled. “Not too much, mind. But I hear you put down one of those fucking witch things. A Scarlet—the boys and girls would do anything for you, just now. No, she’s right there.”

  The vanax pointed through the dust, and Aranthur could see the General, mounted on her black beast. She had a baton in her hand and was pointing up the ridge.

  Aranthur pushed through the pikes and shambled across the open ground. There were a surprising number of dead and wounded Pindaris on the ground, and he was sickened at their youth. Most of them were beardless boys, fifteen years old or even less. Here and there lay an older man with a henna-dyed beard. All of them had lines of black tattoos.

  The General was dictating orders to Syr Klinos, who had an arm in a sling and blood on his face. Before Aranthur could stumble up, the man saluted and rode away. He was replaced by Sasan, still straight as an arrow, the horsetail plume on his helmet twitching in the fitf
ul breeze.

  Dahlia was managing the shields; Aranthur could feel her saar before he saw her. Beyond her, Prince Ansu sat on horseback, eyes closed, deep in concentration. Ringkoat had the General’s personal standard. Just beyond him was a familiar face, dark as good leather. The man smiled at Aranthur and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “You look…”

  It was the Masran Magos that Aranthur had met as “Harlequin.” Today he wore a long khaftan of figured blue velvet, covered in dust, and high boots. At his touch, Aranthur revived a little, and he thought that perhaps the Magos had channelled saar straight into him.

  “You faced their Exalted,” Harlequin said.

  Aranthur grinned, despite his fatigue.

  “Two,” he said.

  A groom brought him a horse. Best of all, the groom brought him Ariadne, and he mounted carefully. The young man offered him a leg up, and he took it gratefully.

  The dust was everywhere, and the only way Aranthur could see anything was to get a glimpse into the viewing image cast by Prince Ansu. But even after several minutes of looking, he couldn’t piece together the images he saw with the terrain. He saw a cavalry battle, and a confused running fight, but he had no reference to their locations.

  “Harlequin,” the Masr magos whose real name, according to Dahlia, was Qna Liras, pressed him for details of his encounter with the adversaries he called “Exalted.”

  Aranthur shook his head.

  “They are enhanced,” he said. “In fact, the enhancement seems to be a standard of the enemy. The slaves they used against our infantry were also enhanced.”

  Qna Liras nodded. “That accords with what we think we know.”

  “Who is ‘we’?” Aranthur asked.

  The dust was settling. The sun was still shining, and the long, grassy ridge down which the enemy cavalry had come now appeared empty.

  A flash of black and red.

  Dahlia held it.

  “Timos!” called the General.

  Aranthur bowed to Qna Liras and turned his little mare.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Find Centark Fird, Twenty-third City. Probably the leftmost in the line, if they held. Tell him that we will begin a general advance when he sees a flash of blue light from the centre. Then off to the left and find Kunyard. I need a report. As soon as you can.”

  “Yes, ma’am. General advance, blue light, Vanax Kunyard, report.”

  “Go!” Tribane shouted, and he was cantering away, his legs curiously slow to find the rhythm of his horse’s movement. Everything hurt; he felt as if he’d been dragged over stones.

  The Twenty-third City stood third to the left of the front line; their senior centark was on foot. They were one of the best City regiments, in scarlet vests and short fur hats, and their lines looked untouched. In front of them, the enemy dead lay like flotsam left by a tide that was now receding.

  Aranthur saluted and delivered his orders.

  “About fucking time,” Fird snapped. Then he smiled. “Don’t tell her I said that.”

  Aranthur saluted and rode away. Ariadne was much fresher than he. Her explosion into a gallop almost unseated him, and he had to lean forward to stay mounted.

  But as soon as he cleared the regular Second regiment, in their small red turbans and buff coats, he could see the cavalry battle. As far as his eye could see, men and women and horses were intermixed—thousands, and even tens of thousands. They milled just beyond the flank of the first line. Aranthur glanced back to find that there was no longer any second line; the General had committed her reserves. At the top of the ridge, the Capitan Pasha’s third line was advancing to take the ground that the Sipahis had just left.

  Aranthur let Ariadne carry him up the ridge, skirting the edge of the cavalry fight on the left. Even from higher ground he couldn’t pick out Vanax Kunyard or his staff. He couldn’t even find the red-gold shimmer of their saar shield.

  Ariadne raced up. Aranthur passed what had been the position of the second line, now occupied only by the great gonnes of both armies and an impromptu field hospital guarded by the Imperial Axes who usually attended the General.

  He could now see the Nomadi reforming. They were rallying on their horsetail standards, and he could see Centark Equus, perhaps two hundred paces away.

  Aranthur put his head down, pointed Ariadne across the ridge at the red-khaftaned cavalrymen, and let her flow into a gallop. He came up as the ranks had settled. The whole regiment might have been on parade.

  “Dekark Timos, as I live and breathe,” Equus said. “Good to see you, old boy. Forgot to duck, what?” he asked, pointing at Aranthur’s left arm.

  “Something like that. General Tribane sent me to find Vanax Kunyard.”

  “I see them, Tsari!” Equus roared to some unseen officer. Then he turned back to Aranthur. “See the Whitecoats? See the City Cavalry?”

  Aranthur did see them.

  “He’s somewhere there.”

  Equus waved with his horsetail riding whip by way of a salute, and turned away.

  “Squadron will advance,” he said to his trumpeter.

  Aranthur trotted along the back of the regiment he’d spent a week with. Fifty saddles were empty; he didn’t see Dekark Lemnas of the carabiniers anywhere.

  He passed the left end of the Nomadi and passed across open ground. A little clump of enemy horse watched him, and one man rode at him. Ariadne easily outdistanced the man, who dropped back like a lion balked of an antelope, slowing as soon as he knew his horse to be inferior.

  Aranthur pulled up among the dusty white coats of one of the City Cavalry regiments. The Nomadi had charged, and the whole mass of enemy horse had flinched away, unable to match their close order.

  “I’m looking for Vanax Kunyard,” he asked the city troopers—men and women just like him, part-time soldiers.

  They looked exhausted, their horses done in, but they were formed in ranks. Most of them were drinking from canteens and trying to get their horses to take a mouthful of water.

  “There’s his adjutant, Uschar,” one of the troopers said. “Bright blue coat.”

  “I have her,” Aranthur said, and he was off again.

  “What in ten hells is going on?” shouted a militia dekark behind him, but Aranthur needed to catch the blue-coated officer before she rode off. She was bare-headed, her bright blonde hair like a brass helmet. She was shouting orders to another detachment of City Cavalry, urging them to get water into their horses.

  “Damn it! I need you one more time!” she called.

  Aranthur rode up from behind. She shot him a look, one hand on her pistol holster, and then turned her horse.

  “You are?”

  “Timos, General Tribane’s messenger. The General requests a report on—”

  “This mess?” she snapped. “We haven’t lost yet. No idea why. They have ten to one in numbers but they keep backing off.” She turned back to the city troopers. “Are you ready?”

  Someone had the energy to shout “no” and half a dozen weary troopers laughed.

  Uschar allowed a very slight smile to flit across her face. Then she spoke to Aranthur.

  “Sorry I can’t be more help, but the Nomadi have just opened a hole in our line and someone needs to patch it.” She waved a puffer at Aranthur and trotted off. “Follow me, Fifth City!”

  With a clatter of hooves on stony ground, the militia cavalry trotted off, forming in close order as they moved forward into the gap created by the charge of the Nomadi.

  Aranthur watched them gather speed. Their horses were so tired that they barely passed a heavy trot, but the enemy cavalry dispersed in front of them, the whole cloud of them racing away into their own cloud of dust.

  Kunyard was nowhere to be seen. The cavalry melee went on, off to the left, as far as Aranthur could see through the dust, which rose to the heavens like an offering to the God of War. He sat on Ariadne, nearly choked with dust, in an agony of indecision, until Uschar’s ponderous charge came to a ha
lt, far off down the plain.

  He knew very little about war. But it seemed to him that the cavalry had at least cleared the flank of the first line. Kunyard and his staff were nowhere to be seen.

  He pointed Ariadne’s head back down the ridge, at the just-visible standards of the Second Regiment, and let her run. She was tiring now, and he was not much better. He took a moment to gather a little saar from his crystal, and it refreshed him so much that he drew more.

  He passed behind the Second and then behind the Twenty-third City, waving as he passed. Then the Second Bagas and Ninth City and the Fourth Arnaut and the First South Getas. Then the wreck of the Third City, a hundred survivors still huddled around their standard, and then he was with the General.

  “Well?” she asked.

  Behind her, the Black Lobsters stood like statues.

  “Ma’am, I couldn’t find Vanax Kunyard. I found Myr Uschar—she believed that the cavalry fight is a draw. Ma’am, she said she’s outnumbered ten to one, but that the enemy don’t press.”

  “Hmm,” the General said. “How helpful. Well, syr? What do you think?”

  “Ma’am, I’ve never been in a battle.”

  “Syr, none of us has. Not like this.”

  “Well, then, for my money, the Nomadi just cleared the flank of the first line and there’s cavalry supporting them. That’s what I saw.”

  Aranthur shrugged, as if to disclaim responsibility for his own report.

  Tribane looked left, as if the dust might part for her. He saw her face set, saw the moment of decision.

  “Jennie? Ready with the blue light?”

  Ringkoat smiled. “We’re attacking?”

  Tribane shrugged. “When in doubt, attack.”

  She pointed at Jeninas, who, kneeling a few paces from her horse, lit the fuse on what looked like a child’s rocket. The General smiled at Aranthur.

  “Not magikal, so it can’t be tampered with.”

  The fuse hit the powder and the black tube spat fire. In one breath, it climbed away through the dust. Suddenly it was engorged in blue flame, rushing into the heavens. It only lasted for a count of three—then it burst in a rain of blue stars.

  To their right, the First’s drums began to beat. Beyond them, the Yaniceri crossed their trench, and then, like a tired wrestler, the whole of the Allied army stumbled forward. Almost immediately, they came to the low ground between the two ridges, and the marshy stream there, and they slowed again.