Dark Forge

by Miles Cameron

  Aranthur waited for some response from the distant enemy. It was all very slow. Tribane cursed and cursed again, and he was kept busy warding a sudden swarm of flies off Ariadne, as if the little muddy stream was full of insects. Off to the left, the survivors of the Third City came forward—a thin line of survivors unwilling to await the conclusion of the day. Beyond them the banners of three more regiments could be seen. A second line regiment, the Seventh Souliote, came from the second line and filled the gap where the Third City had been. The survivors vanished into the fresh regiment’s ranks.

  With Ansu and Dahlia he helped repel a veritable barrage of workings. He stopped counting after the sixth attack, and he spent all the saar he’d borrowed from his crystal and more besides. Dahlia appeared to be grey, her hair limp, her face lined; he had a glimpse of the hard-faced older woman she might be. Ansu channelled to her, too inexperienced in shielding to cast himself. Harlequin worked brilliant spot defences, tiny aspides that functioned only exactly where they were needed, a technique that Aranthur had never seen before.

  And then the whole line was across the wet ground and still un-opposed, and the moment of danger was done. They were moving—moving at a brisk, swinging pace, as if the men and women of the Attian infantry, the Byzas and the Arnauts were gaining energy and spirit from every step forward.

  The Yaniceri began to sing, their band playing a magnificent march—cymbals and drums and shrieking fifes—and the line surged forward towards the crest.

  A paroxysm of supernatural rage lashed the Allied line. Five hundred soldiers died—immolated, crushed, desiccated, blood-boiled or bone-jellied—as the front line’s saar shields failed, as individual aspides and amulets failed. The whole horizon seemed to be aflame with the enemy workings.

  The Attian music never faltered. The drums beat on, and the Yaniceri’s singing was picked up by the Arnauts on the left of the Imperial line. Women stepped over the ruined corpses of their friends; men slogged forward, slipping on the intestines of their comrades.

  As the front line went forward, it closed to the centre without an order, so that pikes began to compact to the centre, where the enemy sorcerers were. And behind them, all the Attian gonnes and all their own fired constantly, pounding the enemy Magi. The enemy magikers, in their turn, cast heavy charcoal-coloured shields to resist the cannon, but the shields themselves gave the gonners a better target. Every enemy Magos casting shields was one fewer to be throwing fire at the Allied line.

  Aranthur found himself riding between Prince Ansu and General Tribane, with his red aspis cast and hanging in the air in front of them, spread as widely as he could cast it.

  The next onslaught of sihr struck them. This time, the carnage was only half that of the first great strike, and the front line began to cheer. On the left, the Attian third line units, the reserve, began to sweep forward. The Capitan Pasha could be seen leading his Household Sipahis off to the right, a wall of Attian chivalry crushing the lighter enemy horse and breaking the enemy left.

  “Well?” Tribane asked fate, and her enemy. “Do you have a reserve?”

  The enemy sorcerers broke. A hundred paces away, they were mounting horses and camels and running. A dozen stood their ground, casting as fast as they could, the air full of their fire.

  A pillar of light exploded among them, tongues of lightning lashing out.

  “It’s killing its own people for running,” the General said with satisfaction. “And it doesn’t have a reserve.”

  She turned to Qna Liras Harlequin.

  “This is your show, ain’t it?”

  Qna Liras shrugged.

  “I have no idea if I can take it. I’d like some help,” he said agreeably, as if he was moving furniture.

  The pillar of light began to retreat.

  “That is a Disciple,” Qna Liras said. “A real one. The first we’ve ever seen alive.”

  “Not the first I’ve seen,” muttered Sasan.

  In front of them, just to the left, a body of enemy cavalry were forming as a rearguard—perhaps two thousand armoured men.

  Tribane turned to the Black Lobsters at her back.

  “Companions!” she roared. “There is our foe! Defeat the men, and leave the pillar of light to our Magi. Ready!”

  There was a growl, and the pillar of light was getting farther away. Some of the infantry regiments were slowing. There was nothing to fight, and beyond the crest of the ridge could be seen the enemy camp.

  “Klinos! Tell the Capitan Pasha to keep the heat on and not to stop to pillage the camp and I’ll see to a fair distribution of the loot. Beg him!”

  Klinos saluted and rode off.

  “Here we go, Companions!” the General called in her high, clear voice.

  The Black Lobsters began to trot.

  Their heavy black horses made the earth shake.

  The enemy cavalry that was supposed to protect the enemy’s sorcerers broke and began to flee in all directions. Off to the right, the remnants of the Pindari cavalry turned and fled, and the whole enemy right began to give way.

  And in the very centre, the Magos in the blue velvet khaftan rode up the last of the ridge, alone against the pillar of light.

  Aranthur turned to Sasan and Ansu.

  “I’m going to try to help,” he said.

  Dahlia laughed. “Of course you are.”

  Sasan grinned. It was an ugly grin. “I would give my life to strike at that thing.”

  Dahlia cast a layered shield over the four of them, a swirling mist-shield, another proaspismos technique that Aranthur had never seen. He, for his part, drew deeply on his crystal. He took more power from the kuria than he’d ever taken.

  He glanced at Sasan.

  The Safian met his eye as if reading his mind.

  “Absolutely,” he spat. “This thing has killed my land and enslaved my people. Let’s do it.”

  Aranthur turned to Ansu, who was checking the prime on his puffer.

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he smiled.

  The four of them rode up the hill behind Qna Liras.

  Qna Liras reached the crest of the great ridge and raised his arms.

  The pillar of white fire seemed to hesitate, and then it swelled, its light bright like the sun, unbearable; a hemisphere of brilliance. Around the Masran light bringer grew a rainbow of light-effect, becoming a hemisphere of glittering, opalescent Aulos, as if an oily perfume had been poured into an eggshell and then coated in gold powder. Where the two effects met, there was a cataclysm of sound and colour and texture, as if rival realities contended for possession of the space and the means to fill it; in the contended zone where the two shields crossed, colour, light, and sound were a vivid but irrational display; moments of intense blackness shot through with alien stars; images of carrion birds, all coming and going faster than thought.

  What impressed Aranthur most was that he could detect no particular working. It was as if Qna Liras and his adversary contended with their very beings—as if their workings flowed from them without beginning or end. Next to the flow of the Masran Magos, Aranthur’s casting was as pedestrian as a man slowly ploughing behind an ox is to a racehorse galloping free without a rider.

  “Holy shit,” Dahlia said.

  Aranthur kept riding. He rode well out from the pillar, but he crossed the ridge, and Sasan stayed with him.

  “Stop!” Dahlia said. “We can’t change this!”

  Aranthur thought she was wrong.

  “Sasan!” she called. “Don’t die for nothing!”

  “Somewhere in the centre of the pillar of fire is a man,” Aranthur said. “We can get to him, and at the very least, we’ll interrupt his casting.”

  “You think that you can just ride through that curtain of white fire?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Aranthur was heavy with the fatigue of battle and the added burn of the enhancement he’d used earlier, but he was certain, nonetheless.

  Ansu’s thin face wore a set smi
le. He checked the priming in his magnificent matchlock, the lacquered stock catching the sun.

  “You are all three fools,” Dahlia said, shaking her head. “I don’t want to watch you die, so I might as well come along.”

  Ansu looked at Aranthur.

  “So your plan is…?”

  “Distract it,” he said. “There’s a man in the midst of all that white fire. I’ll wager my life on it.”

  “You are wagering your life,” Sasan said. “And ours.” He nodded. “But I, too, believe there is a man—or a woman—in that fire.”

  “So?” Dahlia asked.

  “We ride up behind it, shoot with our puffers and cut our way in,” Aranthur said.

  “That’s your plan?” Ansu asked.

  “Do you have a better?”

  Prince Ansu shrugged. “No. But I expected… Never mind. Of course—let us do this desperate, stupid thing.”

  “Puffers?” Dahlia asked.

  Aranthur shrugged. “Muskets worked on the Exalted. I have a theory…”

  “Oh,” she said, her tone heavy with sarcasm, “that’s all fine then. You have a theory.”

  Nonetheless, she took her puffers from their holsters, and checked their priming.

  They were well past the pillar of white fire. It was still drifting backwards, even as it contended with Harlequin’s. Where the two of them passed the ground was often scorched down to rock; indeed, rocks in their wake glowed a dull red. Aranthur could feel the heat. It was a little like watching theatre or the opera in Megara. Unbelievable.

  “You can’t be serious,” Dahlia said.

  Sasan leant over and kissed her.

  “I think you should stay here and live.” He raised an eyebrow at Aranthur. “Couldn’t you magik me again? Or a horse?”

  “He’s too spent already,” Dahlia snapped. “Just look at him. He can barely speak. This is crazy.”

  Aranthur shrugged.

  “Look at them,” he said, pointing at the surreal combat. “We can do this. We’re—”

  “Perhaps this is not for Dahlia,” Sasan said. “We—”

  “Keep your male bullshit for another occasion,” she snapped. “You are not leaving me out of this just because I’m wise enough to know we’re doomed.”

  She drew a puffer and checked the priming.

  They all did.

  “Ready?” Aranthur asked.

  The four of them turned their horses, and charged.

  The ground was smooth, the grass tramped flat, and their horses, tired though they were, managed a hand-gallop.

  About forty paces out, the white pillar spat a tendril of fire. It engulfed Dahlia’s shield of mist, contending with it.

  A second bolt struck Aranthur’s red shield, which burned black and collapsed.

  A third, in almost the same tempo, struck Dahlia’s creation from another angle, and it blackened.

  Twenty paces out, they were naked.

  Aranthur, slightly in front because of Ariadne’s speed, cast his red shield again. He had it ready in his mind, and he flowed into it, raising it as soon as he was conscious of the other falling. In the same tempo, the white fire struck, and struck again. He had an odd moment of realisation, in the midst of battle, that his ability to recast was almost infinite…

  Something enveloped the white pillar in its moment of distraction. It had no more sihr to spare for the four riders. Indeed, the pillar seemed to shrink, and become smooth. It lashed back, flailing a whip of embodied thought at Qna Liras, whose hemisphere also sank in around him.

  Aranthur, ten paces from the smooth white fire of the Disciple, put the barrel of his puffer at the very centre and fired.

  The fire rippled, and Sasan fired both of his puffers, turned slightly in his saddle like a trick rider. Ansu shot as he turned to the right, over his bridle arm.

  As far as Aranthur could see, the Disciple’s shields shed all the bullets.

  Dahlia turned to the left to have a clear shot.

  Aranthur and Ariadne went forward into the fire. He had the Capitan Pasha’s puffer in his left hand, and his sword in his right. His mind screamed as they passed through the edge of the Disciple’s white fire. The barrel of the weapon tracked the shape of the man at the centre of the white pillar, fear and elation cancelling the pain of his wound and the totality of his fatigue. The weapon seemed to fire of its own accord and he was through the other side, turning Ariadne, who was panicked by the fire and yet had proved true to her salt, overcoming her fears.

  Aranthur had to turn in a wide circle, and he missed fifty heartbeats of combat, struggling with Ariadne’s fears. When he looked back, the white pillar was gone. Harlequin stood with his staff pinning a writhing, wounded creature to the earth.

  Aranthur touched spurs to Ariadne, and she responded, angry at the spurs but still willing. He reined in just in time to see the thing under Harlequin’s staff begin to char, as if burning from inside. He had a single distinct image that haunted his nights, of a child’s face set in a look of hate.

  And then it was gone, burned to ash.

  Aranthur dismounted, and walked up. Sasan was close, his sword in his hand. Dahlia was just beyond him, her shields up and steady. Prince Ansu was loading his puffers.

  Qna Liras smiled at Aranthur.

  “That was very timely,” he said, as if they were at a party and Aranthur had fetched him a glass of wine.

  Then Harlequin went down on one knee, faced the sun, and began to pray.

  3

  Eastern Armea

  It was a victory, but the cost was hellish. Aranthur—despite near saar exhaustion, despite already feeling the effects of having used the Safian enhancement, despite a suppurating wound from his left elbow to his wrist—helped Sasan and hundreds of other men and women to collect the survivors from the front line regiments that had collapsed in the face of the Exalted. There were enough survivors to make the search worthwhile. As the light faded, and the hyaenas and vultures and ravens arrived in vast numbers to make speed the more essential, he found himself clearing the very ground on which he’d fought the Exalted. He carried a Safian woman up the ridge to the Imoters, her severed hand and broken arm hastily bound. He went back and helped a regular musketeer carry a big Attian Yaniceri. He went back a third time and stabilised the blood flow from a drummer girl discovered in the litter of corpses from the destruction of the Third. He carried her up to the hill and went back again into the darkening valley, his clothes sodden with blood and ordure.

  It was on the fourth trip into the valley of death that Aranthur found himself standing over the corpse of one of the Exalted, and he flinched. It was as if he expected the thing to spring back into new life. He had never seen anything so terrifying, so beautiful and lethal, in his life. Now the corpse was like an alabaster statue, except for the tattooed lines around the wrist and throat.

  Aranthur knelt by the corpse, and touched it. And then he grew less hesitant, although the skin was wrong.

  It was all wrong. The skin was more like vellum or parchment than like a corpse’s skin.

  Feeling like a ghoul, he took his razor-sharp eating knife off the scabbard of his dagger and, after a long moment of fear, cut the skin above the wrist. The skin was tough, like vellum.

  The bone flashed silver, like metal.

  Aranthur recoiled. He flinched, but curiosity drove him back to the corpse.

  The skin was already brittle. The stench was incredible; even in the moments he’d been kneeling there, the skin had passed from milk-white to a sort of ivory-tan. The blued-steel eyes, open in death, were rotting.

  He turned the wrist. From his belt purse he took his student’s book, a book he’d bound himself in happier days, and the lead pencil bound in brass that he used when he had a good thought about an occulta. He thumbed to a blank page, past a sketch of Dahlia lying on his bed, and another of the Master of Arts’ hand on a grimoire, and a formula for gunpowder, and a recipe for lavender soap.

  He knew the characters
on the wrist. They were in the Safiri script. They ran in a perfect circle, like the worm Ouroboros, eating its own tail—the beginning of the invocation was the last character of the end as well.

  Binding.

  The same invocation and characters on the neck.

  He shook his head to clear it, and rose from his knees. Darkness was falling, and full exhaustion was hitting him, and the deep depression of fatigue and violence.

  The ravens came suddenly and in vast numbers—thousands of the big birds, summoned from the wooded slopes of the Alti by the smell of a battlefield. The hyaenas came in packs, their blood-matted muzzles and carnal stink an embodiment of the reign of death on the night-time battlefield. Twice, Aranthur used his sword to force one of them off a pile of dead and wounded. The guardians of the underworld would stand a few feet away, bloody teeth bared, daring him to relinquish their prey. Aranthur was trying to find the other Exalted, but darkness was coming too fast. The Wild had come for its share of flesh, and he could not keep it at bay. He stumbled back, and back again, and found himself straddling a boy of perhaps twelve, clutching his gut, which proved to have a deep stab wound.

  “Water,” the child begged, in Safiri.

  Aranthur raised his shields to keep the hyaenas at bay and lifted the boy, who gave a weak scream. He struggled, but Aranthur carried him. Everything felt as if it was made of lead, but he was determined to save this one child. It became his light, his beacon, and he trudged heavily up the ridge towards the Imoters. The climb, which Ariadne had managed in heartbeats, appeared eternal. He went up, up, one foot in front of another, a different kind of combat.

  And then other hands took his burden, and he fell forward into a haze of light, or it seemed that way. There were hundreds of them on the ground. The rows of wounded stretched off to the edges of the darkness, and the magelight was pitiless in showing their wounds. There weren’t enough Imoters—a dozen of them struggled to keep death away—and Aranthur thought of the hyaenas. His gorge rose.