Wildling

by Curtis, Greg

  Those people were coming. The eleven had told them that. They were marching with the army behind them. Following their trail though the central wastes and hoping that any of the creatures that might harm them along it had either been killed or that they could deal with them. But when and how they would arrive he didn't know. None of them knew how far behind them their army was. How long they'd have to hold the Dicans back. Not even whether the rock from the slip would hold until the others joined them. Or whether the Dicans would tear it down first.

  “Let’s get moving.” Garren gave the order and they quickly set off after him, down the gentle slope from their camp to the new born lake. By day lake builders and by night warriors. It was an odd mix of trades.

  But in the end it was what they had to be.

  Chapter Forty Six.

  Nine days later the Dican army was still camped where it had been, just at the top of the west channel opening on to the top terrace. They hadn't moved since the first attack with the ragwort, and the reports were that they weren't really able to. Too many were too sick to march. That had to upset the Dicans, though Dorn couldn't imagine that they were in any better shape. The thought of five hundred or a thousand black priests scratching their skin off themselves brought him more than a little pleasure.

  Dorn had added to their misery with two more attacks with the white wrath, both late at night when the soldiers were trying to sleep, and both more successful than his first one. He guessed that each attack had sent five thousand or more soldiers screaming and running off into the night and hopefully frightened the rest. It was still only a flea bite against an army of that size, but it was something.

  Then Alyssia had dealt them another blow. Using her fire arrows under the cover of darkness she had set a hundred and a half wagons filled with barrels of oil on fire. The flames had lit up the entire night sky and left a beacon that could be seen for a score of leagues. But she'd paid a price for her attack as she had been spotted by the soldiers and hit with half a dozen bolts and arrows as she ran away. She was alive, but it would be a long while before she was back to her full strength.

  Garren had struck them too, in a move that was either genius or madness. Dorn still couldn't decide which. He'd simply mugged a scout – there were still a few wandering the land hunting out enemies – put on his armour and then strode through the encampment pretending to be carrying a message. With the soldiers caught up in their own problems, no one had even questioned him. Not even when he'd reached the supply caravans at the back of the encampment and poisoned their food as he pretended to inspect it.

  With little food and little oil for the war machines, most of the soldiers sick and ten thousand at least having fled in complete panic, Dorn wasn't sure why more of the army hadn't fled. Surely no amount of gold could be worth the suffering? But they stayed. They didn't advance but they didn't flee either. Whatever the hold was that the black priests had over the men, it was powerful.

  Unfortunately they were in a better position than they knew. Dorn had used the last of his white wrath. The ragwort was also gone. In another day or two the army would be able to march again. And then even if the war machines were useless they had the best part of two hundred thousand men with picks and shovels.

  Which was why he'd decided to try another attack.

  That and he was sick of spending his days wandering up and down the hills between the mountains hunting for places where the water was escaping and planting flags for the wrights to find when they finally arrived.

  It was time to get bloody. And in a way he'd never tried before.

  His plan wasn't particularly complicated or well thought out. It probably would never have achieved the status of being described as a tactic. In fact many would have called it suicidal. Which was why he hadn't told the others about it and had snuck out while they slept. But the black priests had to suffer. They could not be allowed to win. To bring more death and misery to his people. And they were the key. Defeat them and defeat the army.

  Or maybe it was just hatred that motivated him in the end.

  “Home and hearth.” Dorn mouthed the ancient prayer as he crept silently towards his target and prepared himself for the attack. The black priests. Whether Xeria would aid him he didn't know. He doubted it somehow. But in the end he knew he was fighting for her cause. For family.

  It was easy at first. No one spotted him. The soldiers were sick and not very alert. Most of them were sleeping. A lot were moaning as they did so. And none of them were very alert. It was dark with the moon only a quarter full above them. And his natural colouration as a dappled panther made it hard to spot him as long as he stayed away from the fires. But he had a long way to go.

  The Dicans had learned a lesson of fear all right. They had learned it well enough to know that they didn't want to ever face him or any others. So they'd made their camp right in the middle of the army, where they were surrounded by soldiers. Where they thought they were safe.

  They weren't safe.

  A couple of men moaned in their sleep, horses nickered and in the distance he could hear snoring. All the normal sounds he expected to hear. And most important he didn't hear the one sound he had expected to. The sound of someone crying out in warning.

  Naturally he used all the cover he could find. Slinking under wagons and behind tents wherever possible, keeping to the darkest parts of the camp and freezing whenever one of the sentries came near. And little by little he approached the Dican's sleeping area.

  The priests hadn't thought to post a sentry. No doubt they'd thought the thousands of soldiers surrounding them would act as their guards and they didn't want to be disturbed by a guard doing his rounds as they slept. That would cost them dearly.

  They'd also made one other serious mistake. They'd decided to sleep in tents. No doubt it was warmer and more comfortable, but it also allowed him to spot them from afar. To show him where to go. All the unimportant soldiers were sleeping out in the open. But worse for them, each tent was a small affair, holding only a few priests, and hiding them from the view of the others. What happened inside the tents no one would know about until the morning. If he was quick enough and quiet enough.

  Dorn reached the nearest of them and immediately slipped inside through the flap, unseen.

  Inside there were three of the black priests, all of them sleeping, and it was the work of heartbeats to reach the first one, smash him hard on the temple so that he wouldn't wake up, and then rip his face apart with his claws. Dorn did that twice more and in less time than it took to say a single prayer had left the tent and was moving on to the next one.

  It was dangerous not killing them, and the hatred burning in his heart was telling him that they needed to be slaughtered. But he knew as he went about his business that the Lady Sylfene had been right and that killing was wrong. He should avoid it if he could. This was better. It was about sending them a message of fear. That they were not safe. Anywhere. Not even in the centre of the largest army ever assembled. Besides, some of them would surely die of their wounds in time.

  The next few tents were exactly the same and he left each of them soon after, a trail of unconscious mutilated priests in his wake. But on the fifth tent one of the priests woke up.

  The man saw him, his eyes opened wide and he started to scream. But Dorn was on him before anything more than a gasp escaped his throat. He cut off his air supply, smashed him hard on the back of the head and then tore his face apart, before his companions woke. They suffered the same fate soon after and after a few deep breaths for comfort he moved on.

  And so it continued. Tent after tent Dorn simply entered and left, and between his speed, silence and the lateness of the hour no one knew anything about his presence. He hoped that they wouldn't until the morning. In fact as he continued his work he began to hope that no one would be any the wiser until he had finished.

  But of course it couldn't last. Somewhere around the twentieth tent – he'd lost count by then – he heard a cry comin
g from someone in one of the other tents. A wail of pain and horror that split the air and he knew that his work was ended. He cursed quietly. There were still so many more to hurt. So many more that needed to suffer. But he knew it was over. It was time to leave. But that at least he had a plan for.

  Quickly he shifted, stripped the robe off one of his victims – the man wasn't going to need it after all – and dressed hurriedly. He didn't need to dress completely. It was still the middle of the night and no one else would be fully dressed. So if he didn't have any sandals on it wouldn't be noticed.

  Then with his hood up, he poked his head out of the tent to see the other priests rushing off to the tent where the injured man was still crying out. They looked worried, as well they should. And while they started panicking, calling out to the guards and sounding the alarms he slipped behind the tents and headed away. Even if anyone thought it was strange that he should be leaving the scene he knew no one would bother him. No one annoyed a Dican. Certainly not a mere soldier. Not to his face anyway.

  Moments later he had escaped to the latrines where a few soldiers were nervously going about their business as the commotion behind them grew louder. Some of them even asked him what was happening. Which gave him another idea.

  “Some of my brothers ran out of courage. They grew afraid as they thought they would die here. They wanted to flee. They lost their faith so I made sure they lost their faces as well.” He laughed, letting just a little of his throaty roar creep through and frighten them.

  “Remember that soldier.” He grabbed the nearest of the soldiers and rubbed his face with his blood covered hands.

  “You may all die here of starvation and disease. Wild beasts may tear you apart. And you will certainly never get any coin. But you will not run. Dica does not permit it.”

  “Tell your brothers that. Tell them that if they should even think of running I and my brothers will descend on them like lions. We shall tear them limb from limb and dine on their flesh.” He laughed some more and this time let a lot more of his roar through. They paled with fear.

  “Now come, wear the blood of my weak willed brothers as marks of my lord's will. And then take my message to your friends. You will serve us as soldiers or as food.” One by one they came to him, trembling, and he rubbed his bloody hands over their cheeks as a form of benediction.

  “Now go. And do not fail me.” This time he let out a small roar and it had the desired effect. They ran. Pants down around their ankles, bare flesh showing in the pale moonlight, and faces covered in blood, they ran as if the demons of the underworld were after them. And he laughed at them, making sure that they heard.

  Once they had gone, no doubt to tell their brothers in arms about the mad priest who'd slaughtered his own and who was promising to slaughter them as well, he threw his robe into the sewage pit and disappeared into the night.

  He wondered how many soldiers would still be there come morning. After all they were sick and frightened, many had run screaming in fear, food was running out and the oil for the war machines was gone. He had told them there was no gold coming their way. And now they had to worry that the priests giving them their orders were turning into savages planning on eating them. With the blood on their faces as evidence and the ruined faces of the other priests as well, he couldn't imagine that the mad priest’s words would be doubted. Surely most of them would finally find the courage to leave.

  It had been a good night's work he thought as he headed back to the others.

  Chapter Forty Seven.

  The dawn brought changes to the war, though not quite the ones Dorn had hoped for. The army was still camped by the top of the western pass leading to the terrace. They hadn't moved and the dark grey smudge they made against the land looked roughly the same size. If any had left it didn't seem to be a lot. But something had obviously changed as there was smoke rising from the camp. Black smoke and lots of it. Almost as much as the snap dragons had made as they burnt. That could only mean that there was a fire down there burning out of control. Maybe many fires.

  Funeral pyres? He couldn't think what else it would be and unfortunately the smoke was making it hard for even the hawks with their sharp vision to make out. But if they were funeral pyres burning, then there had to be a lot of them. He didn't think that many would have died from what he'd done. But maybe the disease, the food poisoning and the ragwort had finally started claiming their lives? He could only hope.

  Still, they would have to wait until the fliers came back to learn what had happened.

  As they prepared their breakfast on the cooking fires, their thoughts were all on the army below and not the food. Luckily the flyers were fast and it wasn't long before the first of them had returned and shifted to give them his report.

  “It's a war!” Brin seemed shocked by the words coming out of his own mouth. As if he couldn't believe he was saying them. And Dorn wasn't sure he was hearing them either. War?

  “The smoke is from the tents and wagons and war machines which are burning out of control. Most of the camp is burning. The tents of the Dicans are all gone. And the soldiers are fighting each other. Hand to hand and with bows. There are at least a dozen camps. And everyone's fighting everyone. It's complete chaos. No one seems to know who's an enemy and who's a friend. There are bodies everywhere, thousands of them. And the battle is far from over.”

  “What did you do?”

  The shifter stared at Dorn as if accusing him of something and Dorn felt uncomfortable. Despite his attempts to remain unnoticed he'd been seen leaving and returning the previous night. No one had said anything but they knew. And they knew who to blame.

  “Me?” This wasn't his doing. Dorn was sure of that – mostly. “I might have torn a few faces apart. Dican faces. But I didn't kill them as far as I know. And then I might have worn a robe and told a few soldiers that it was the Dicans that had attacked their own. And that there was no gold for them. I thought it would persuade a few of the soldiers to leave. But I didn't think it would start a war.”

  Could it have?

  Yet at the same time as he was confessing he was also thinking that it didn't matter. No matter the cause, if they'd turned on one another and burnt the war machines, then there was little left to worry about. No matter who or how many survived and remained behind, they would not be able to destroy the lake. Most would surely flee while in time the wildling army would come, the wrights would fix the broken dams and the lake would refill in time and there would be no one left to stop that from happening.

  And more importantly, hopefully they wouldn't now have to fight a war. A hundred and twenty shifters against two hundred thousand had never seemed like something they could win.

  “Why? What were you thinking?” Garren asked the question and Dorn didn't know if he was genuinely curious or looking to prosecute him in some way for a crime. But he had the right to know.

  “The Dicans work on fear. The contract the priests make with Dica when they take the black robe is that they will never know fear again. It's what allows them to do such terrible things. They believe that they will never have to be afraid. That's why the white wrath was such a dangerous weapon to use against them. And why they killed their own soldiers rather than letting them run wild creating panic among the others.”

  “But we were out of white wrath and I had to find another way to let them know fear. So I did. They thought they were safe. If they discovered that even in their camp surrounded by hundreds of thousands of soldiers they were still vulnerable, their faith would weaken. Especially when they saw the ruined faces of their brother priests and realised that that could happen to them. That Dica could not protect them.”

  “The soldiers follow the priests up here for two reasons. For the coin they will earn and because they are accustomed to following the orders of the priests. They don't respect them at all. In fact they despise them. But they fear them enough to know that they have no choice but to obey. If they thought there was no coin they would become
upset. They would not want to fight and die for nothing. And if the priests were harmed while they were camped within their own army the soldiers would doubt them. If they thought the Dicans were the ones killing each other that doubt would grow. And they would not know whose orders to follow or what orders they could trust.”

  “We were out of ragwort and white wrath. In a day or two Dican’s army would be here. And I thought that this would stop them marching. Bring us more time. At least until the others arrived. And maybe some of the soldiers would baulk and go home, weakening the army.”

  It was the truth. But it wasn't the complete truth, and as the others stared at him he suspected that they knew it. They knew his darkness. They knew that he had done much of what he had done out of simple hatred and rage. When there had seemed to be no hope left to him he had given into it. He imagined that they knew many of those same feelings themselves.

  No one said anything for a time. Not for a long time. Dorn suspected that they wanted to. They just didn't know what to say. That it was a brave act? That it had had to be done? That it had been foolish and reckless? That it was the act of a madman? Maybe he thought, it was all of those things.

  “So what do we do now?”

  Dorn didn't know who asked. A woman somewhere. But he was grateful that someone had finally broken the silence. Especially when he knew the answer.

  “We wait and we watch.” In the end that was all they could do. That and eat breakfast as the army below slowly tore itself apart.