Dark Forge

by Miles Cameron

  “Syr Timos, do you like what you see?” she asked.

  “Even without the perfume,” he said.

  She laughed. It wasn’t a giggle, but a whole laugh, and she almost doubled up, and then, rather suddenly, she sat down.

  “Horse sweat. Erotic as all the hells. Oops! Drunker than I thought.” She smiled at him. “That was funny, and I need some funny.”

  He reached out a hand and pulled her up, and she, with a grace that belied long practice, put her lips on his and kissed him. There was nothing tentative about it. It was more than a little like an erotic cavalry charge, and Aranthur’s whole body responded.

  As did hers. Hands wandered, and time passed…

  “I don’t think that my reputation would bear making love in the grass in public,” Alis Tribane murmured. “Come.”

  Her hand was iron hard, with ridges of callus that spoke of reins and sword hilts. She dragged him along, and he laughed at her urgency, and then he could see her red pavilion, lit from within by a lantern.

  Standing in the door was Coryn Ringkoat. He smiled at Aranthur.

  “Are ye sober, General?” Ringkoat asked.

  “Not even a little,” she said. “And horny as hell, so—”

  “Too bad. General Roaris is here.”

  “Fuckwit.” The General spoke loudly.

  “Absolutely, but he’s sitting in your tent.” Ringkoat raised an eyebrow to Aranthur. “Another time, perhaps.”

  Aranthur smiled. “I understand.”

  “Fuck,” muttered the General.

  She took Aranthur’s hand and very softly bit it.

  Aranthur laughed and walked off into the darkness. Behind him, he heard her voice raised in anger, and then he heard Roaris spouting insults.

  Lemnas, of the Nomadi, handed him some arak.

  “From Atti,” she said and hiccuped, which was very funny.

  He sat with her, and with Vilna, on a saddle blanket, and watched the stars.

  “Tomorrow we pursue.” Vilna sounded perfectly sober. Aranthur wasn’t sure he’d ever heard a word imbued with so much meaning. “Let’s go to bed.”

  Lemnas laughed. “Subjhar, I almost died today. I may just choose to stay up all night.”

  Vilna got to his feet.

  “Perhaps. But the horses will require work at dawn—the tack will still have to be oiled and cleaned, and then—”

  Lemnas threw a cup at him. But ten minutes later, Aranthur was alone. He collapsed on his blankets and slept.

  Morning came far too early, and Aranthur’s hangover was a nasty wraith sitting in his head and driving silver spikes into his skull from inside. But someone was pulling insistently on his foot. He kicked, failed to make contact, and eventually found himself looking at the severe face of Vilna.

  “Drink this and don’t spit,” Vilna said.

  Aranthur drank. It was foul, but he’d had other such concoctions, usually amid pranks at the Academy. He drank it off and sat up.

  “Oh, Lady,” he moaned.

  Vilna laughed.

  “Horses don’t feed themselves,” he said. “Come. You were one of the most sober.”

  Aranthur was very tempted to tell the Nomadi veteran that he wasn’t actually on the strength and couldn’t be made to do shit duty like currying horses the day after a battle, but there was something about the wiry little man that made it impossible to sputter such stuff.

  He flung off his blankets. He was still fully dressed in his battlefield clothes, liberally doused with blood and other fluids and now stinking like rotten meat.

  He pushed through his tent flap and vomited for the second time in ten hours.

  “All better? Curry horses,” Vilna spat. “Next time, spew outside of tent lines or pay fine.”

  He laughed, slapped his thigh, and went off down the tent row.

  Sasan and Dahlia’s tent was empty, and there was no sign of Prince Ansu.

  Aranthur spent an hour working his way down the picket line. He started with Ariadne, who gave him a look meant to indicate her feelings about her condition. Then he did the other horses: Dahlia’s and Sasan’s, and then Ansu’s gelding, and on down the long line.

  Vilna came, checked some hooves and a coat, and handed him a big bowl of honeyed gruel and yoghurt.

  He slurped it down before considering whether he was still too hung over to eat. Vilna produced a cup of steaming quaveh.

  “Bless you, Vilna,” he said.

  The sun was rising in the east. The valley was still full of ravens and hyaenas.

  “We will move today,” Vilna said.

  “Lady!” Aranthur spat.

  Vilna shrugged. “No point to win fucking battle. Unless pursue, ride, kill.” He shrugged again. “Don’t stop. This is victory. Win battle—worth my shit. Pursue—destroy. Then victory.”

  Aranthur didn’t understand. He was filthy, and his head hurt, and the sun was blazing, and it was all he could do to continue working. He went down the second picket line, and was well into the third when a trooper he didn’t know appeared with a bronze canteen of water, another cup of quaveh, and another bowl of meal.

  Aranthur ate and drank while the new trooper curried. The new man didn’t speak Byzas; they had a halting conversation in Attian, which neither of them knew well enough, and then exchanged smiles and went to work. With a second pair of hands, the horses went better, but it was mid-morning before they had a dozen more pairs of hands at work, and the horses gleamed.

  Centark Equus appeared and tacked up his own charger. He clucked a few times over his horse’s condition, saw Aranthur, and smiled.

  “The man of the hour, what?” he said. “Enjoy being a lowly groom, young Timos. I hear you are to be promoted.”

  Aranthur smiled. But he kept the brush going in circles.

  “He’s not going to want to do much today,” Equus said, referring to his mount, a big Nemean stallion. “We’re moving in an hour. You’re with us.”

  “Am I?” Aranthur asked. “I think I’m on staff…”

  Equus smiled. “Trust me, young Timos. I have your best interests at heart. I’m taking the light horse out now. You ride with me.”

  Aranthur went back to Ariadne, who was, all things considered, in fine shape; after all, he’d had remounts all the day before. He put her bridle on, saddled her, and stole her a double handful of oats from the General’s manger.

  “I packed your kit,” Prince Ansu said.

  He looked as if he’d been beaten, with deeply hollowed eyes and lines by his mouth.

  “Are you all right?” Aranthur asked.

  Ansu laughed. “No, I was in a terrible battle and then a party nearly as perilous. By the hundred and forty-four.”

  “I curried your gelding.”

  “I knew you had heroic qualities,” the Zhouian said. “I’ll try not to humiliate myself.”

  “I’ve thrown up twice. It helps.”

  “Child, dost thou think I knoweth this not?” Ansu asked in passable Armean. He managed a smile.

  Less than an hour later, silent and mostly surly, they were moving. Aranthur and Ansu rode with the centark.

  “From this morning, I am, at least temporarily, a Vanax,” Equus said.

  “Congratulations,” Aranthur said.

  They were just cresting the ridge, so that the remains of the enemy camp, which both armies had looted enthusiastically, lay at their feet.

  “I am commanding the pursuit, at least on this axis,” Equus said.

  “How long will the pursuit go on?” Aranthur asked.

  Equus looked back at them, his face unreadable.

  “A pursuit goes on until the victors are too tired to continue or the losers are destroyed. I rather think it’ll be the latter, don’t you?”

  “Destroyed?” Dahlia asked.

  Equus turned his horse. “Dahlia—”

  “You mean, until we kill even more of them?”

  Equus shrugged. “Just so. All of them, if we can manage it. The whole poin
t of winning a hard-fought action like yesterday’s is that afterwards, the defeated usually disintegrate. They can’t manage an organised resistance unless they have a rearguard. We’ll see what this lot can manage.”

  “And then we kill them,” Dahlia said.

  “Precisely.” Equus’ voice was gentle. “It’s war. General Tribane has ordered it.”

  “Lady!” Dahlia turned her horse aside and looked down at the plundered camp. Armeans were still stripping the tents. “Did you get anything good?”

  Aranthur shrugged.

  “You didn’t go into their camp?” she asked.

  Sasan shrugged.

  “He was helping the wounded,” the Safian man said.

  “As were you,” Dahlia said. “I see. You two are working on sainthood, perhaps?”

  Aranthur smiled at Sasan.

  “Luckily,” Lemnas said, “the General guaranteed an equal division of spoils to all.”

  Dahlia flushed.

  Equus nodded. “Myr Tarkas, I know you are not under military discipline, but anything you… found… must be handed in to be shared.”

  Dahlia sighed. “I thought I’d averted poverty for a year or two.”

  Equus was standing in his stirrups, looking at the ground behind the enemy camp.

  “Maybe you have. There was quite a bit of gold in that camp. I say, Timos, have a gallop along to the Second City Cavalry and tell them to shake out into a skirmish line after we pass the camp.”

  As Aranthur turned his horse, he heard Dahlia spit, “We’re going to massacre people, but we have rules about dividing the spoils?”

  “Precisely,” Equus said.

  Aranthur rode along to the regiment that was, by rights, his own. He saluted the centark commanding and passed the message.

  The centark raised an eyebrow.

  “You’re this famous Timos?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She laughed. “Well, I’ve never met you, but apparently you brought honour to the regiment yesterday.” She reached out and shook his hand. “You know you’re to be promoted?”

  “I heard it mentioned, ma’am.”

  She smiled. “Well, wear it well. I could use another centark. We lost half our officers yesterday.”

  “I really know nothing—” he began.

  She cut him off with a wave.

  “I’m a mercer, Syr Timos. What do I know of cavalry skirmishes? But here we all are.”

  He saluted and trotted back up the column to the Nomadi, who were already forming line. He fell in behind Equus.

  “What are we doing, syr?” he asked.

  Equus stood in his stirrups again.

  “Can you cast that far-seeing occulta?” he asked.

  Aranthur nodded.

  “I’m a little beaten up by yesterday,” he admitted. “I’m not exactly full of zori.”

  “Zori?” Clearly the Ellene word puzzled him.

  “Saar. Power.”

  Aranthur cleared his mind. His horse immediately sensed his relaxation and began to crop grass.

  Aranthur found the volteia and summoned his saar. He took his time, and built the whole construct in his sandbox, and then nudged it into the Aulos and the viewer burst into reality, fully formed. It floated in front of Equus.

  It seemed very difficult to find the power. There was dark sihr in the ground, and in the air—the Aulian equivalent of death. But the saar was thin and difficult to manipulate.

  It occurred to Aranthur that with his transference occulta, he might be able to link the viewer to the user so that it would stay in one place relative to the user. But he lacked the talent to do it. Theoretically he could add all sorts of things to an occulta; at a practical level, they simply became too complex at a point—uncastable.

  Equus looked out across the plain. In the distance there was a river; in the viewer, it sparkled, and there was a bridge and a dome. He tracked to the right and left, but the bridge was the only significant feature. There were several patches of woods, one large, and in the left centre of the plain, a domed hill, as if someone had upended a bowl there.

  The line started forward. Aranthur carried messages, as did his friends. As the line of light cavalry moved across the plain to the river, it thoroughly explored the woods and a detachment seized the top of the bowl-shaped hill. The line began to gather prisoners—wounded men abandoned the day before, or men who’d lost their mounts, or who were dazed, or who simply wanted to be done.

  Sasan made it his business to collect the prisoners. Aranthur came across him several times, as the prisoners were gathered in the shade of a grove at the base of the hill.

  No one offered any fight, and the line continued forward, cautiously examining every building, every projecting stone, every stand of trees or patch of rough ground. By mid-afternoon they’d come miles. The hill was a dim hump behind them, and the horses could smell the water of the river. It was difficult to hold them, and many of the militia cavalry were already having trouble with their mounts, too tired to go on.

  Equus sighed.

  “I want to see that bridge,” he said. “Let’s finish what we started.”

  He rode along the line, reassuring his officers in person, and then the line went forward to the sound of a trumpet. Many horses walked, heads down, tails like wilted flowers. Their riders were not in much better shape, but the line made it to the water, and veteran file leaders made sure that the watering of the horses was orderly.

  The bridge had been broken by sihr. The edges of the magnificent stone structure were burned black, and there was a hole in the centre; an entire span was missing. In the water below were dozens of corpses, some burnt, some merely drowned.

  “You can’t hold a bridge from one end,” Equus said. “Lemnas? Find me a good ford.”

  “Wait, syr,” Aranthur said, just as Ansu raised his hand imperiously. Both men rode forward.

  “Dahlia?” Aranthur called, and she rode carefully down the bank to the water’s edge.

  “Lady,” she muttered. “That’s a stigal.”

  Aranthur could see the thing, which appeared to be black. It was hanging from the broken beam of the middle span of the bridge.

  Aranthur leant forward, and a wave of wrong passed over his face like a foul smell.

  Someone moaned.

  Dahlia’s head snapped back to him.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  Aranthur’s sword hilt was warm to the touch.

  Ansu turned his horse. “It’s a very powerful curse, anchored to that artifact suspended from the beam.”

  “But what made the noise?” Dahlia asked.

  Up above them, on the bridge’s apron, Dekark Lemnas put her carabin to her shoulder. There was a flat crack and the artifact spun off into the water with a splash. Immediately the sense of wrong passed away. Aranthur could actually feel the curse being moved downstream. It was also sinking; the curse was struggling with the water.

  He ignored the noise and the warmth of his sword hilt, which had felt as if it was vibrating. He put his horse’s head at the top of the apron and Ariadne sprang up the bank.

  “Centark, the enemy have left…” He shook his head. “Sorcerous traps. Only the Twelve know how many, or where.”

  “Barbarous,” Equus said with a shiver. Then he straightened. “It is my duty to find their rearguard if I can. Dekark Lemnas, find me a ford, but do not cross.”

  “Yes, syr.”

  Lemnas carefully completed the loading of her short, rifled weapon and then gathered a handful of her troopers. Aranthur noted that they had the best horses. The old Steppe nomad, Vilna, took two men and a woman and went the other way.

  “Kunyard is off to the north somewhere. Attians to the south of us. We should be seeing their dust.” Equus took a deep breath. “It’s big out here. A thousand cavalry can just vanish in the haze.” He paused. “I don’t like these sorcerous traps.” He was looking at the bloated corpses in the water. “Terrible way to die.”

/>   “A sword in the gut is better?” Dahlia asked.

  Equus shrugged. “A sword in the gut is a risk that I understand. It’s an odd thing—the nomads hate magik, mostly. But they like you lot.”

  “Steppe people have their own ways into the place you call Aulos,” Ansu said. “They distrust your way much as you distrust sorcery.”

  “Well said, Highness.” Equus was watching the dust to the north, where Lemnas was cantering along the riverbank. “But General Tribane is worried, and if she is worried, I am worried.”

  “The General is worried?” Aranthur asked.

  “The General is paid to worry all the time,” Equus said. “Give me that viewer thingy again.”

  Aranthur cast. It was much easier the second time. And the saar seemed more plentiful.

  “And there she is—Lemnas has a ford.” Equus looked all along the eastern horizon. “Now, does our beaten enemy have a rearguard, or not?” He glanced at Aranthur. “You are allowed to comment.”

  “I don’t know anything, syr.” He looked at Prince Ansu.

  Ansu leant forward.

  “I think our adversary is happier trusting his sihr than mere people.” The Zhouian looked rueful. “Also, I observe that we left his corps of Magi largely intact, but his soldiers were badly beaten.”

  “Fair enough,” the centark said. “So you mean that instead of a rearguard, we have these traps.”

  Aranthur nodded with Ansu.

  Equus’ pleasant round face took a sterner look.

  “Right, then,” he said. “Follow me.”

  Aranthur cancelled his viewer with a faint pop as the shaped lenses collapsed.

  He followed Equus to the ford.

  “Do you have a proaspismos ready to hand?” Ansu asked Dahlia.

  “I do. I don’t like it.” She turned to Aranthur. “You know that every time you access the Aulos, Magi can find you?”

  Aranthur nodded.

  “I’m sure I knew that, some time,” he said ruefully. “I’ve never actually had the polemageia class.”

  “I’ve had it in second year. That was enough to teach me how different battle magik is. I know that the Polemagi, the Battle Magi, are trained to cloak their castings as they perform them. I watched them yesterday. That was their failing—they were better at cloaking than at casting.”