by David Weber
"What kind of war?"
"Ha! It's gonna take more than a few hours to answer that one! Let's just say we're up against a bunch of certified looney-tunes who're more than willing to murder as many civilians as it takes to make their point. And," he conceded grudgingly, "a lot of them are perfectly willing to die themselves along the way."
The tall red-haired "gunnery sergeant's" voice had gone flat and hard, Wencit noticed. He rather doubted Houghton realized just how true that was, but it confirmed several things Wencit had already suspected about him.
"You sound like a man who's seen too much bloodshed, Ken Houghton," he said quietly. "Too many innocent dead."
Houghton's jaw muscles clenched hard for a moment. Then he inhaled deeply.
"Damned straight I have." His voice was as quiet as Wencit's own, but burred with anger and the ashes and clinkers of old hatred. "Not all of them from the other side's efforts, either," he continued. "I don't know about wars here, but the one we're fighting back home is a copperplated bitch. We do our best to minimize civilian casualties, but how the hell do you do that when the other side fades into the rest of the civilian population? When you're doing your goddamned fighting right in the middle of a frigging city?"
He shook his head hard, and Wencit nodded.
"It's the children, isn't it?" he asked gently. "It's the children that make it hurt so badly."
Kenneth Houghton's nostrils flared as he heard the sympathy-the understanding-in Wencit's voice. Somehow, he knew, the old man, the wizard, truly did understand. And because he knew that, the gunnery sergeant found himself admitting the truth.
"Yeah. It's the kids." His jaw tightened once more. "It's everybody caught in the mess, but especially the kids. They never asked for any of it, never got to choose. If it was just us against the bad guys, out in the open, one-on-one, that'd be one thing. But it isn't. And I don't guess it can be, really. We call it cowardly, and maybe it is. But it's also what they call 'asymmetrical warfare.'" He grunted a harsh, bitter laugh. "They're not about to come out where we can blow their asses off, because they know they can't possibly fight our kind of war and win. So instead, we have to fight their kind. And the more civilian casualties that get inflicted, the better it works out for their plans. After all, we're the ones in their cities. If somebody gets killed, who are the locals going to blame for it?"
"You're tired," Wencit said. Houghton looked at him, and the wizard smiled crookedly. "Not physically, perhaps. But tired-so tired-of seeing the innocent killed."
"What?" Houghton tried to rally. "You're a mind reader, too?"
"No, I'm a wizard, not a mage. But I don't have to be able to read your mind. Not to see that truth, Gunnery Sergeant Houghton. Trust me," the smile went even more crooked for a moment, "even if we've never met before, I recognize the kind of man you are. I've known others like you. Too many of them, I think sometimes."
"And?" Houghton said when the wizard paused again. A little warning bell was trying to sound deep inside Houghton's brain. Somehow the conversation was slipping out of his control, going places he'd never intended it to go. He'd intended to maintain his focus on the demand that he and Mashita be sent back to their own universe, yet something inside him knew it was going in another direction entirely. And something else inside him couldn't resist that changing destination.
"And I'm afraid I'm about to lose another one of them," Wencit said. "A good man, one with a sense of responsibility, who's already seen and faced enough evil for any other man's entire lifetime. I think you'd like him, if you ever met."
"And you're about to invite me to do just that, aren't you?" Houghton said. It was a challenge, but without the edge of confrontation Wencit had half-expected. "You're going to suggest that I ought to go ahead and help him-and you-out, like one good, responsible man to another."
"Something like that," Wencit admitted.
"I don't think so," Houghton responded. But his tone wasn't quite as firm as he'd wanted it to be.
"You've said you're fighting an ugly war back home," Wencit said. "So am I, my friend, and I'll wager I've been fighting it even longer than you have. A lot longer, in fact. I know what it is to have blood on your hands. To lose friends, comrades. To see the innocent caught in the middle of all the carnage-to wonder if your efforts aren't actually making it worse. If at least a part of you isn't becoming the very thing you're fighting. That's what I'm doing out here in the middle of nowhere, the reason I cast the spell that ended up bringing you and your friend here, as well."
"I'll take your word for it," Houghton said. "It's still not my war."
"No?" Wencit cocked his head. "Maybe it is. Surely, evil is much the same in every universe, isn't it? And-" he looked directly into Houghton's green eyes "- quite a lot of children have already died in my war, as well. And more of them will die very soon now, if it isn't stopped."
"Shit happens." It was supposed to come out hard, uncaring.
It failed.
"Yes, it does," Wencit said. "May I at least show you what I'm talking about here?"
Houghton knew better. He knew better, and yet someone else seemed to have control of his voice.
"Sure," he said. "Go ahead. Trot it out, but you're gonna have to go some to beat the kind of shit I've already seen."
"Am I?"
Wencit smiled oddly, and then his hands moved. They sketched an immaterial square in the air, about chest height, four feet or so across, and two or three tall. Houghton frowned and started to open his mouth to ask him what he thought he was doing, but then the air in the square Wencit's hands had defined seemed to ripple abruptly.
The Marine's mouth snapped shut again as the ripple effect cleared as suddenly as it had appeared. In its place were images-sharp, as crystal-clear as any video screen or television Houghton had ever seen. And, as he saw them, Houghton felt a sudden, total confidence that what he was seeing was an actual, faithful record of what had truly happened.
It was one of the most horrific things he had ever seen.
Kenneth Houghton had seen men, women, and children mangled and mutilated by "improvised explosive devices," by mortar and rocket fire, by artillery shells, bombs, machine-gun fire, and small arms. He'd seen the horror napalm left behind, the indescribable burns of white phosphorus. Yet this . . .
He stared at Wencit's images and saw brutal combat with swords, axes, pikes and halberds-the sheer, personal butchery of edged steel cleaving flesh, close enough for an enemy's blood to spray into a man's face and eyes. He saw arrow storms, and thundering cavalry. He saw fountains of flame he somehow knew were born of the same sort of "sorcery" which had brought him to this world, this place. And he saw other flames-the flames of burning cities and villages, their streets littered with the bodies of those who had once lived in those blazing homes. He saw the bodies of women, mothers, cut down as they fled with children in their arms. He saw the children they'd tried to save. He saw laughing warriors tossing screaming children into the flames. He saw blood soaked altars, surrounded by the butchered bodies of sacrificial victims while still more victims were dragged, fighting frantically, to their fates. And he saw . . . creatures he had no names for-creatures out of the darkest depths of nightmare-killing and maiming, devouring. He saw them being directed, controlled, in their slaughter.
And he saw the men-and women-who stood against the tide of butchery and darkness. He watched them, recognized the iron determination and raw courage which kept them on their feet, facing that avalanche of horror when simple sanity must have cried out for them to flee for their lives. Some of them seemed wrapped in glittering coronas of blue light, like some sort of lightning. Others were simply men and women, with no light, no special aura. Only men and women who could not let the darkness triumph unopposed. Who had to face it.
And who died fighting it.
He saw it all, and only much later did he realize that what seemed to have taken hours at the time could not have lasted more than a very few minutes.
A
nd then, as suddenly as it had begun, it ended. The images disappeared, and he found himself staring into Wencit of Rūm's wildfire eyes.
"That's my war, Gunnery Sergeant Houghton," the wizard said very, very softly. "And it's the war my friend is riding straight into all by himself."
II
"I'm thinking as how something new's after being added to the pot," Bahzell Bahnakson said to his horse.
Except, of course, that the magnificent roan stallion under his saddle wasn't a horse. In point of fact, Walsharno, son of Mathygan and Yorthandro, was a Sothōii courser, far larger than any mere "horse," and as intelligent as any of the Races of Man. And, like the fox-eared hradani in his saddle, a champion of the war god, Tomanâk.
*And to just what sudden stroke of genius do we owe that particular observation?* a mellow voice asked deep inside Bahzell's brain.
"The fact that we're after seeing another entire batch of hoof prints joining up with them," he replied, waving one hand at the trail of trampled grass leading steadily southeast from the slight rise upon which they had halted. A second trail had just joined it, angling in from the west.
*Oh, that.*
"Aye, that," Bahzell agreed sardonically.
*Well, maybe there'll be enough of them that they'll get in each other's way,* Walsharno suggested.
"And if you're after believing that, I've some bottomland on the Ghoul Moor I could be letting you have cheap."
*I never said I thought it would happen that way. I merely pointed out that it could.*
"Aye, so you did. And so far as wishful thinking is going, it's in my mind it's not so very much less likely than the King Emperor deciding as how he should be after adopting me as his heir."
Walsharno blew through his nostrils, shaking his head in equine amusement, and Bahzell chuckled. Not that either of them truly found the situation all that humorous. Champions of Tomanâk were seldom handed easy challenges, but this one was turning steadily more nasty as they went along, and Bahzell eased himself in the saddle as he contemplated how simple it had all seemed in the beginning.
It had started as little more than an unidentified raiding party, attacking herds and small villages along the southern frontier of the Kingdom of the Sothōii. Everyone's first assumption had been that the raiders who ruled the Kingdom of the River Brigands at the head of the Lake of Storms were responsible. But they had protested their innocence, and-in this case-they'd actually been telling the truth. Tomanâk was the god of justice, as well as the god of war, and no one could lie successfully when one of his champions directly invoked his power.
Had it in fact been the River Brigands, the situation would have been straightforward and relatively simple. The Brigands knew hradani only too well, and, like everyone else in northwestern Norfressa, they were sufficiently familiar with Bahzell's reputation to have listened very closely when he suggested that their current activities might be . . . unwise. Unfortunately, it hadn't been them after all, which had raised the interesting question of just who was responsible, and why.
Raiding the Sothōii was always a high-risk proposition, even when there wasn't a champion of Tomanâk handy. The Sothōii cavalry was the most deadly light horse force in Norfressa, and the wind riders-mounted on coursers like Walsharno-were the most terrifying heavy cavalry the world had ever seen. The raiders had shown uncanny skill in picking their moments and targets, then vanishing before even Sothōii cavalry could respond, but no one could keep that up forever. Sooner or later, they would be unlucky, and people who were unlucky against Sothōii cavalry were very unlucky, indeed.
Even leaving that aside, there was the question of exactly what the raiders were doing with their booty in the first place. If the River Brigands weren't involved, then who was paying them for their plunder, and where were they disposing of it? The vast, rolling expanse of Norfressa east of the Kingdom of the Sothōii and of the Empire of the Spear was still only imperfectly explored. The Spearmen's borders were advancing slowly but steadily eastward, but the hundreds of leagues of grassland and forest were still all but uninhabited. A few hardy bands of homesteaders had carved towns and villages, a scattering of independent baronies and vest-pocket kingdoms, out of the wilderness, but that was all, and none of them were likely to be able to pay for stolen goods. For that matter, the neighborhoods in which they lived were dangerous enough already. None of them were likely to be stupid enough to make things still worse by arousing the Sothōii's ire by dealing with anyone who had attacked them.
But if the raiders weren't shipping their plunder south through the Brigand river ports of Krelik and Palan, and if they weren't selling it to one of those eastern settlements, then what were they doing with it?
"I'm not liking this one little bit," Bahzell said aloud, and Walsharno tossed his head again, and not in amusement this time.
*There've been too many jabs like this over the last few years,* the stallion agreed grimly. *And there's the stink of the Dark about this.*
"Aye, that there is." Bahzell's tone was every bit as grim as his companion's. "I'm thinking himself wasn't after sending no fewer than four of his champions off to the Wind Plain for no reason at all."
*He didn't "send" all of us,* Walsharno pointed out. *Some of us were born on the Wind Plain.*
"And so you were," Bahzell acknowledged. "Still and all, it's not so very happy in my own mind I am about how much interest the Dark is after showing in the Sothōii and my own folk. Come to that, himself's not so happy about it, either. And if the number of champions he's been after sending out this way is anything to be judging by, I've the nagging suspicion there's worse to come."
*It does seem the Dark Gods are especially exercised over the relationship your father's been working out with the Sothōii,* Walsharno said. *And my folk, too, for that matter.*
"And why might that be, d'you think?" Bahzell asked ironically.
*I'm sure I don't know.*
"And himself's not about to be telling us, either, is he now?"
This time, Walsharno simply snorted, and Bahzell chuckled harshly. For the most part, he both understood and agreed with Tomanâk's reasons for not simply leading his champions by the hand. Still, there were times a man might have appreciated at least a few hints about what the Dark Gods had in mind.
Part of it was easy enough to understand. Bahzell's father, Prince Bahnak of the Horse Stealer Hradani, who'd finally brought the warring northern clans together under a single crown and a single banner, was no friend of the Dark. Worse, he was working steadily with Baron Tellian and some of the other senior Sothōii nobles to bring an end to the thousand years of hostility, hatred, and open warfare between them and his own people. His cordial relationship with the city states of Dwarvenhame was something else the Dark Gods couldn't approve of, as his people became steadily richer, better educated, and prosperous.
The Dark didn't like any of that, for obvious reasons, which would have been fully sufficient to explain its constant interference with Bahnak's progress. Yet Bahzell was convinced there was more to it. The Dark's efforts had been too specifically targeted, and the Dark Gods themselves had interfered too openly, for him to believe otherwise. And, as Walsharno had just observed, there was the stink of the Dark about this, as well.
"Are you after thinking what I am?" he asked after a moment.
*Probably,* Walsharno replied glumly. *It does appear to be our area of specialization, after all. The question that occurs to me is whether or not the other side counted on that. I'm getting rather tired of enjoying so much of the Dark Gods' personal attention.*
Bahzell's laugh was full of gravel. He'd been developing a more and more specific feel for what they were pursuing, and that feel was growing increasingly familiar. As Walsharno said, both he and his companion appeared to have a special affinity for dealing with Sharnā 's followers and the demons who served them. There were, he conceded, safer "specializations" a man might have taken up.
"At least it's a job we've managed to be doing
so far," he pointed out.
*And it's also the sort of job you only get to fail at once,* Walsharno countered as if he'd read Bahzell's previous thought. Which he probably had, after all.
"Here now! That's no way for a champion of Tomanâk to be thinking! It's the challenge of it you should be pondering on."
*Oh, I am. I am!Can't you tell?*
Bahzell chuckled again. Then Walsharno started forward once more, following the tracks which had led them so far, and Bahzell glanced up at the sky. Another couple of hours, he thought. They'd have to be thinking about making camp, soon, but they could cover a few more miles before sunset. It wasn't as if they hadn't already covered quite a few of them. In fact, they were well into the Empire of the Spear, less than a week or so from Alfroma, even for a horse, much less a courser, and his expression softened slightly at the thought. Zarantha of Jashân's mage academy was located at Sherhan, just outside Alfroma. He'd been contemplating a visit to her for some time, although he hadn't had anything quite like this in mind. Still, it would be good to see her again . . . always assuming, of course, that he and Walsharno survived this little journey.
III
Trayn Aldarfro's eyes opened once more. This time, they actually stayed that way for more than a minute or two.
Not that it was any particular improvement.
Trayn lay belly-down across a horse's bony spine, tied firmly into place like a pack saddle. His head wound had finally stopped bleeding, although his hair was heavily caked with the blood he'd lost before it did. The broken ribs on his left side-at least two or three of them, he thought-sent grating stabs of anguish through him each time one of the horse's hooves came down, and a pair of well-muscled dwarves hammered steadily away at the anvil behind his forehead. Still, taking everything which had happened into consideration, it was astonishing that he was as close to intact as he appeared to be. Which, unfortunately, wasn't the same thing as being lucky to be alive.
