Dark Forge

by Miles Cameron

  Centark Domina turned to Aranthur. She smiled grimly.

  “If they stay in contact, you won’t have to do this again tomorrow. By Coryn, young man—you and your friends are like Drabants.”

  The Drabants were the band of heroes who had been the bodyguard of Rolan in the War of Wrath.

  Aranthur was too tired to enjoy the praise. He was too tired to drink wine. He found an Imoter and visited Ansu, who was almost recovered, and Dahlia, who was in worse shape. By the time that darkness fell, he’d explained the day to Equus and he was asleep. But his dreams were dark, mostly of watching despairing men hacked down by Imperial cavalry.

  The trumpeter woke him, and Omga had all his gear laid out, and a little hot water for a hasty sponge-bath. He was presentable when he dragged himself to the morning officers’ call.

  “So pleased that you could join us,” Equus said.

  Vilna put a cup of quaveh into his hand.

  Anda Qan was dictating morning orders to a scribe. Centark Domina was describing the kind of business she would buy Dekark Lemnas, to general merriment. Aranthur shared half his cup of hot quaveh with Sasan, who drank it off and handed him a roll filled with almond paste, which Aranthur thought might be the most delicious thing he’d ever eaten.

  “Good morning, companions,” Equus said. “Last night, as you know, our forward elements caught the enemy and the ‘Artists and Artisans’ did yeoman work carving up their baggage. We kept in contact all night, at least with what remains of their forces in front of us, and this morning, General Tribane will join us to storm what passes for their camp.” He shrugged. “Seriously? We could storm their camp now. The Pindaris are cutting their losses and running. The baggage is mostly abandoned, and all their gonnes are right across the river.”

  “So why are we waiting for the General?” a Tekne officer asked.

  “We’re out of Magi,” Equus said. “And that’s the one thing our opponents seem to have in plenty. Timos, are you up for another day of patrolling?”

  Aranthur managed a smile. “I’m new to the army. Am I allowed to say no?”

  Everyone laughed.

  “Not really,” Equus said.

  “Well, then, I can hardly wait,” Aranthur said.

  But his humour was forced. The whole thing sickened him.

  Equus seldom let his mask slip. But he read Aranthur, put a hand on his elbow, and took him aside.

  “Maybe two more days,” he said. “It is necessary. It must be done.”

  Aranthur nodded. But when he rode away, he wasn’t convinced. And for the first hour of the day, the ground was virtually carpeted with dead Armeans and Safians.

  Pursuit.

  Now he knew why the Nomadi said it the way they did.

  His orders were clear, and much less dangerous than the orders of the last two days: he was to prowl south and east, looking for the outriders of the Attian army. He and Vilna and Sasan and their troopers moved quickly across an empty landscape of abandoned farms and broken irrigation ditches.

  Just before midday, with sentries out in all directions, they took a break and watered their horses at a fish pond watered by a stream from the mountains that were no longer distant. Sasan kicked at the collapsed bank where an irrigation ditch should have received water from a broken dam.

  “No one has farmed here for a year,” he said. “Maybe two.”

  “When did you leave Safi?” Aranthur asked.

  “Two years ago. Maybe more. There was a fair amount of thuryx, brother. It makes time flow like molten metal.” Sasan shrugged, looking at the mountains. “There is my country, right there. Do you think the Pure are beaten?”

  Aranthur shrugged. “Ask Myr Tribane.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “How is Dahlia?” Aranthur asked, changing the subject.

  “She’s not a good patient. She was taken back west last night. Ansu, too. Ansu is really too important to be serving as a cavalry scout, much less as an hermetical point man.”

  Aranthur shrugged again. Fatigue was settling on him like a blanket. He sat on the earthen bank.

  “How long ago do you think the Pure hit this area?” he asked.

  Sasan shook his head. “This kind of intensive agriculture needs a stable labour force. A lot of peasants. And regular upkeep. And infrastructure.” He watched the fish. “If the Pure started raiding here when we were collapsing—that’s three years back. That would explain the cut dams. We’ve crossed a dozen of them, all deliberately wrecked.”

  “And not repaired. The peasants flee, the irrigation fails, the crops aren’t planted—”

  “And people starve. In big numbers—these plains are the breadbasket of Armea.” Sasan stood up. “Or used to be. By the Thunderer… My band of brigands is looking restless.”

  “Can you trust them?”

  “Not at all. It’s like dealing with a band of thuryx addicts. I can’t believe a word they say, but by the gods, if I am patient, I may just habituate them to me. I picked up a few more yesterday night—wounded Safians left in the camps.”

  “You aren’t afraid… they’ll just kill you and run off?”

  Sasan shrugged. “If they do, that is the will of the gods. I am trying to repair… something. It starts here.”

  He extended a hand to Aranthur and dragged him to his feet.

  They rode south, hugging a big, dry irrigation ditch for almost a parasang. A large town with a pair of tall minarets was visible to the south and east.

  In early afternoon, they saw horsemen to the south. Vilna led them cautiously along a fringe of big date palms, and then across a patch of thorny scrub and sandy rock that looked more like open desert than tilled land.

  The horsemen to the south sounded a trumpet, and began to coalesce like a school of fish attacked by tuna on the great ocean.

  “Attians,” Vilna said. “Good horses. Too good to be Pindaris.”

  Aranthur touched Ariadne with his spurs and he and Vilna rode forward, their red coats plain to see. A bey rode out from the mass of riders, followed by a woman with a horsetail standard and a man with an arrow on a viciously curved bow.

  “Now Sophia be praised,” the Attian officer said. He gave a perfunctory salute with his sabre and sheathed it. “Byzas?”

  Aranthur, even in the depths of fatigue, found it funny that an Attian nobleman thought that he, an Arnaut, and Vilna, a Pastun nomad, were Byzas. But he returned the salute.

  “We are from the advance guard of General Tribane’s army,” he explained.

  There followed a deeply confusing hour, wherein Sasan, two of his men, a dozen Attians and Aranthur all tried to explain to one another where—exactly—they were, where the Capitan Pasha was, and where the remnants of the enemy might be.

  Aranthur tried to draw a rough map, but neither the Attian bey nor Sasan accepted his picture as accurate. The best that they could do was to establish that the name of the town to the south was “Al-Bayab” and that the pasha’s advance guard was there.

  “We have flown like arrows from a bow,” Vilna said. “And each of us has flown in a different direction. The Capitan Pasha is far, far more south than anyone thinks.” He shrugged. “If Vanax Kunyard is as far north as Pasha is south…” He looked east.

  He returned to find the General’s scarlet pavilion set up in the midst of what had been the enemy camp, and four of the Imperial regiments camped around her. Despite his fatigue, he had to report to Equus, and then, when he had reported, Equus dragged him to see the General.

  She was sitting at a table, writing. Prince Ansu, arm in a sling, sat in another chair. He leapt up and kissed Aranthur on both cheeks.

  The General kept writing. She glanced up, nodded, and went back to her work. Vlair Timash, her military secretary, hovered nearby.

  “Two copies of this—different couriers. Direct to the Emperor’s hands.” She read over what she’d written. “Copy my orders out for me to review.”

  She handed the pages to Timash, who bow
ed.

  “Equus? And Syr Timos. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  She sounded as tired as Aranthur felt.

  “Centark Timos made contact with the fringe of the Capitan Pasha’s advance guard at Al-Bayab. I brought him in case you wanted to question him.”

  “Parsha, have you had this poor young man out on patrol for four straight days?” she asked.

  Equus smiled and twirled his moustache.

  “He’s shaping into an officer. That’s why you sent him to me, ain’t it?”

  Tribane sat back. “Show me on the map,” she said. “Al-Bayab. By Rolan’s sword, that’s five parasangs further south.”

  She had an actual map on a second table. Aranthur found it fascinating; he stood over it, trying to make the web of irrigation ditches and little bridges and roads match the lines on the creamy new paper. The current location was marked with a pin and a red and black flag. He was able to follow the line of the pursuit, and then…

  “Which town is Al-Bayab?” Tribane asked. “Show me, Aranthur.”

  Aranthur ran a finger south and east, trying to estimate the distance to the mountains, which were marked with ^^^ marks and whose shape was only roughly sketched in. But the big irrigation ditch was correctly marked, and it ran almost due south for almost six miles. Aranthur even found the fish pond where they’d watered the horses.

  “Here,” he said, pointing at a town. “It has two minarets and a temple—I assume it’s a temple to Sophia.”

  Tribane flashed him a thin-lipped smile.

  “You’ve heard about the desecration at the monastery of Helre? At Elmit?”

  “Yes,” Aranthur said.

  The General was looking at the map.

  “We’re spread over a twenty mile front.” She looked at the map. “You know what the prisoners say? This was just a thrust—an interruption, like a stop-thrust. They were to beat us and then turn south into Masr. We even captured their water-train—twelve hundred camels.” She shrugged. “So far, the captured Magi won’t talk. One suicided, one killed two guards and was in turn killed.” She shrugged. “They behave like feral animals.”

  “Masr?” Equus asked. “They were to turn south to Masr?”

  Tribane smiled. “For once, thanks to Drako, we’re ahead. We attacked them at Antioke in the spring, mostly to support Masr.” She shrugged. “That was a secret. Too many of our best troops and best Magi, too. Well, and it was our feint. Or stop-thrust.” She shook her head. “Why Masr, though?”

  She looked up and her eyes met Aranthur’s.

  “Am I allowed to know where Roaris is, ma’am?” Equus asked.

  “On a ship home, I hope.”

  “He’ll make trouble at home.”

  “I’m fully aware of that, Vanax.” Tribane sounded pettish, and tired. “In my considered opinion, he was making more trouble here.” She stood back from the map table. “Right. We stay at it. I want all those sorcerers. They can’t be far. I don’t really need to know why they planned an elaborate feint before invading Masr. I can just kill their sorcerers.”

  “I’m almost out of fodder, and there’s nothing to forage here,” Equus said. “I noted that in my evening report.”

  “So noted.”

  “Ma’am…”

  Tribane turned. Her profile against the candles on her writing table was like an old first Empire statue: the nose sharply defined, the lips chiselled.

  “Parsha Equus, please shut up, there’s a good fellow. We will pursue as far as we possibly can, and then a little farther. I assume that any reasonable sentient is tired of killing the defenceless, but we’ll keep at it another day and then we’ll have their fucking sorcerers. To the best of my knowledge, no one has handed the Master a defeat in the field before. We have to make it count. The territory we’re standing on is worthless. We’re not liberating anything, and we sure as the ten thousand hells are ice cold can’t hold the ground. I have all his gonnes. I have his baggage. Now I want his little coven of sorcerers who take human hearts out of fucking refugees to make roadside curses. I want them all. Then I will declare victory and march home to deal with fucking Roaris and his craven arse.” She took a breath. “Or maybe to Antioke. I’m worried by the silence from there—we should have taken it in a matter of weeks. Now…”

  Equus saluted. “Yes, ma’am.”

  They walked out of the pavilion, which glowed red behind them.

  “I love her, and she’s the best general the Empire has produced in three hundred years, but…”

  Equus was walking across the trampled grass in the dark, and Aranthur didn’t know if he was meant to hear all this.

  “But?” he asked.

  “But if we run out of food and fodder, we could lose this army as fast as a defeat in battle. In a battle, you lose maybe ten or twenty per cent of your people. If you run out of food…” Equus spat. “Go and get some sleep. You’ve earned it.”

  Aranthur didn’t even remember lying down.

  But he awoke, suddenly, from a terrible dream. It was dark; the inside of his little tent was almost pitch-black.

  Something was wrong.

  Very wrong.

  He stumbled out of the tent, buckling on his sword, and bumped into Dahlia.

  “What the hells?” she asked.

  “Something…”

  “I feel it too,” she said. “Potnia’s fecund pussy, Aranthur. What time is it?”

  “Almost dawn.”

  “Darkest before the dawn.”

  “What the fuck?” Sasan asked. He wriggled out of the tent he shared with Dahlia.

  “You feel it too?” she asked.

  Aranthur’s feeling of unease only increased, and the absence of alarms somehow made the apprehension worse. He found Ariadne, slipped her picket and mounted bareback.

  He trotted her along the bank of an irrigation ditch, and then slipped down a line of trees, silent and dark against the stars, but the sentry was right where she was supposed to be. She challenged alertly. Aranthur gave the reply and rode further south into the light of the new moon, was challenged again, and cantered back to the edge of camp, where he found Sasan tacking up his horse with Centark Equus.

  “Anything?” Equus asked.

  “Everyone’s alert,” Aranthur said.

  “All the Steppe people are awake. Most of ’em are praying,” Equus said. “Something is very wrong out there.”

  Aranthur raised his magesight, and it flared, shining like a beacon, until he controlled it.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  He felt like a first year student, losing control of a light spell.

  But there was nothing untoward to be seen: a smear of black sihr where people had died in the storming of the camp; another, deeper ink blot of sihr where the enemy Magi had butchered people to make the foci for the stigali. Several spots of saar where, for example, the General had a magelight burning.

  “I’ll look at the northern sentries,” Aranthur volunteered.

  “Please,” Equus said. “I’m turning out the quarter guard. Vilna!”

  The quarter guard was literally the guard of a quarter of the camp. Usually, it was a reserve on duty, ready to deal with a surprise. In slack units, it was a pile of men sitting sleepily together.

  In the Nomadi, it was a full troop, all mounted and with weapons loaded.

  Aranthur trotted north with Dahlia and Sasan. He moved along the semicircle of Nomadi pickets, but they were all alert. When he passed on to the pickets of the Second City Cavalry, the Tekne, he was pleased to see that they were just as alert. Two pickets along the line, he met Lemnas, coming the other way.

  “You feel it too?” she asked.

  Aranthur nodded and pointed back.

  “The whole picket line is intact and awake,” he said.

  “Good. We won’t all be murdered in our beds.” She laughed, but the sound was hollow and lost in the darkness. “It’s cold.”

  “It is damned cold,” Dahlia said. “Something is happening
. I can feel it. It’s in the Aulos.”

  Aranthur rode back along the picket line, but he stopped as the first rays of the sun began to lift over the eastern mountains. The feeling of unease spiked, and for a moment, he felt as if he could hear a man screaming.

  Ariadne laid her ears back.

  “What the fuck?” spat Dahlia. “It’s as if the world is ending.”

  There was an almost imperceptible rumble, like the tremor of a distant earthquake.

  Sasan looked back and forth between the two Magi.

  “What is it?” he said. “All I feel is that I’ve lost an hour’s sleep.”

  “Do you hear the scream?” Aranthur asked.

  Dahlia’s face was white as parchment in the ruddy light.

  “I do,” she said, her voice tinged with horror.

  Suddenly she raised her shields. The last five days had strengthened her, despite her wounds. Her shields rolled out like the rapid flowering of a garden of golden roses, the petals blossoming at the speed of thought until the three of them were covered. And in the same instant, Aranthur engaged his own shields. While they lacked the elaborate layers of Dahlia’s, his too had evolved in constant combat. They rose like a snowstorm of red-gold flakes and his flashing red aspis was like the morning sun, deep and intense.

  Dahlia slipped off her horse. Sasan’s mount began to plunge, and she grabbed his bridle. He dismounted, put a corner of his cloak over his horse’s head and waited.

  Behind them, the Nomadi made a sound like a low scream, the sound of Steppe men and women who had lost someone they loved. Their keening was eerie; the sound rose over the terrible red light.

  Aranthur turned and looked south. The feeling now had a direction—not east, towards the enemy, but south, towards Masr.

  There was a sound like the crack of a mighty thunderbolt, and Ariadne reared.

  A mighty wind rose in the south and began to blow sand at them, and Aranthur murmured to Ariadne.

  The feeling was like a pressure in Aranthur’s head, and the pressure grew and grew, almost exactly like the headache of having overspent on saar.

  “Lady, it is the fucking end of the world,” Dahlia said. “What in all the hells is going on?”