The Stricken Field - A Handful of Men Book 3

by Dave Duncan

  “Oh! Well, er . . . why?”

  The warrior folded his brawny arms and sighed. “The little monster is insane, you understand. He trusts no one, he fears everything. Even now, he cannot rest. Always he seeks more security, yet if he controlled every sorcerer in Pandemia and every kingdom, he still would not feel safe. So far he has kept his existence secret, yet he longs to be loved and acclaimed.” He raised an eyebrow. “You appreciate your own danger, of course?”

  “D-d-danger, your Omnipotence?”

  “You hadn’t realized? One day he may take a notion to destroy everyone who knows about him—including you.” The warlock smiled grimly. “Or he may swing to the other extreme and have himself proclaimed a God so that everyone may worship him.”

  Umpily wiped his forehead. How had he ever become involved in this?

  “I expect he is still thinking it over,” Olybino said callously. ”But he seems to be leaning more to the God solution at the moment. When the goblins and dwarves invaded and destroyed the four legions, he had Emthoro call in reinforcements on an enormous scale. You probably heard the speech yourself?”

  “Yes, your Omnipotence.”

  “I was forced to deprive myself of the pleasure.” The warlock’s face was calm, but his great fists were clenched, the knuckles showing white. ”He deliberately stripped the frontiers of defenses.”

  “But why? Everyone wondered that!”

  “So that the inferior races will be tempted to attack, of course! They have probably begun already. He may know. I don’t. But if they haven’t started, they will soon.”

  Umpily quaked on his hard wooden chair. “All of them?”

  “Enough. The jotnar certainly won’t be able to resist the chance. The caliph was planning to attack anyway. The impire will be engulfed in fire and destruction. Understand?”

  Oh, Gods! ”And Zinixo will come forward to save it?”

  The giant warrior beamed. “There! That wasn’t so hard to work out, was it?”

  No, it wasn’t. It was beyond belief, and yet somehow it seemed logical when put in those terms.

  “But why did he drag you into that speech tonight, predicting victory over the goblins?”

  Olybino pouted. “I’m not sure of the details. I’m not crazy enough to be able to think the way he does, but I am sure he plans to discredit me somehow. Most likely there is not going to be a great victory.”

  “Not more legions destroyed!” Umpily cried.

  “Possibly.” A glint of amusement showed in the warlock’s coal-dark eyes. “But if we are to debate strategy, then tell me what he plans to do with the dragons.”

  “Dragons?” Merciful Gods!

  “The dragons have risen. All four surviving blazes are in the sky now, heading north.”

  Dragons? Not for a thousand years had the dragons been used in war. The millennium was going to live up to its reputation. Umpily licked dry lips and said nothing.

  “No suggestions, my lord?” the warlock asked mockingly. “Well, let us move to more cheerful tidings. I know you escaped with the real imperor. I have heard rumors that the faun is in the game again. You tried to get in touch with me, and I have a rough idea of what you wanted to tell me. Now I want to hear the details. That was why I arranged this meeting. Speak! No, wait. Would you care for a more comfortable chair?”

  Umpily nodded vaguely, striving to rid his mind of thoughts of dragons so he could recall what he needed to say about the new protocol and the imperor’s counterrevolution.

  “We have all night, my lord,” the warlock said cheerfully. He stood up and stretched, his great arms almost reaching to the cobwebbed rafters.

  “All night?”

  “In the morning we shall learn what the usurper plans to do with his dragons.” Something sinister burned in those potent eyes—madness, perhaps. What could be more dangerous than a dying sorcerer? “This is a very historical night, much too exciting for sleep.”

  In the morning what happened to Umpily? Would Olybino let him go, knowing of his whereabouts? Even if he did, Umpily’s loyalty spell to the usurper had been removed. How long until some agent of the Covin noticed, and realized that he had changed sides again?

  He was a dead man, too.

  Pricking thumbs:

  By the pricking of my thumbs,

  Something evil this way comes.

  — Shakespeare, Macbeth, IV, i

  TEN

  Possess the field

  1

  Dark did not linger long in the northlands in summer. The sun had hardly withdrawn below the horizon before it rose again to deal out another day.

  The sea rolled on forever, endlessly green and cold and shiny. A solitary ship rode the billows under a single sail, heading north. Although many others held the same bearing on the same ocean, not a one was in sight. The crew slept, huddled on their benches or on the gratings below, snoring in ragged chorus. A skinny youngster clutched the steering oar firmly, half choked with pride at the honor he had been granted. If he knew that three or four of the sailors were only faking, and keeping a wary eye on him, then he gave no sign. He watched the waves and the horizon and the wheeling white birds, and mused over the lesson in knot—tying that the bosun was going to give him in an hour or so . . .

  Dawn came to Guwush, brightening the roofs of Highscarp. Working gnomes grumbled about summer nights and began to yawn. Day people slept on awhile yet in the overpriced, crowded rooms of the Imperor’s Head.

  The poor and the frugal had chosen less expensive accommodation in the hayloft. They slept on, also, all except one, an aging dwarf. He lay still, but his eyes were wide with horror as he followed the distant trace of dragons.

  The sky brightened in Thume, wakening the larks in the meadows and the roosters of the humble farms. Over the densest forest, the light of day was blocked by clouds and failing rain, then branches and leaves, until only a vague brightness seeped through the ruined windows of the Chapel to where the Keeper knelt in prayer at Keef ‘s grave. Alone.

  Hastening west and southward, morning came to the bloated refugee camp that was Hub. Unseen by day as by night, the God of Death continued Their work, gathering the souls that fever and hunger had released.

  Sleepy nobles bounced in their carriages, heading home from the ball, each one escorted now by mounted guards because of the rabble infesting the capital.

  In an unused stable, Lord Umpily snored in a heavy armchair almost as well padded as himself. A sorceress sat nearby, stoically waiting on her master’s orders.

  Her master paced, pondering what he had learned in the night—pondering also what blow he might best strike against his enemy before he himself was felled. He had never been especially powerful by warden standards, but he was nonetheless a mighty sorcerer. He did not intend to be found unworthy at the end. In his time he had seen enough youngsters die bravely to know how it was done, and there were still a few blank pages left in the history books. Warriors did not die unnoticed.

  Sunlight danced joyously on the icy peaks of the Qoble Range.

  Ylo opened his eyes.

  He registered ceiling, drapes, blue sky through a chink in the drapes, silence from the crib in the corner . . . a bare leg next to his. He moved very slightly to increase the area of contact with that delicious smooth warmth.

  He lingered happily over memories of the previous evening.

  What a transformation, he thought proudly. What a wildcat. What a credit to his teaching. A most rewarding pupil. Big day ahead. Long climb up to the pass. Must pick a good horse. Ought to make an early start, before the stock got too well picked over. He could not hear anyone else stirring yet, though.

  He rolled over and cuddled closer. “Mmmm?” she said.

  He licked an ear, and felt a wiggle of pleasure. “Should be on our way early,” he whispered. “Mph!”

  He slid a hand around to cup a firm, warm breast. There was no resistance. Quite the reverse, in fact. Just two weeks ago he would have needed an hour to prepare that
move. “Ought to get up,” he hissed.

  “Maya’s not awake yet,” a sleepy voice said.

  “So?”

  “So what are you waiting for?”

  Some time later, Ylo drove the phaeton around to the front door. Eshiala was standing there with the bags ready at her feet. He jumped down and went to fetch them.

  Her face still seemed flushed, but perhaps that was only happiness. The smile she gave him now was the sort of thing men dreamed of all their lives. No longer would anyone call her the Ice Impress—Spring Queen, perhaps, with all that that implied. People were coming and going all around, and every man squared his shoulders as he saw Eshiala, but she had eyes only for Ylo. Which was very, very nice.

  “The air!” she said. “And those peaks! You know, I’ve seen pictures, but never real mountains before.”

  “I arranged them specially for you.” He lifted the bags. “I thought you must have. Careful with that one, it has milk in it.”

  “Trust me. And if you think these hillocks are cute, wait until we get to the pass.” Ylo peered around to locate Maya, who was chasing cats, dogs, and pigeons indiscriminately. Satisfied, he turned with a bag in each hand and almost blundered into a man heading for the door. It was nothing serious. The other stepped aside easily enough, but then . . .

  There are two ways of looking at another face. One of them says: I know you.

  And when that other face registers shock for just a moment and then goes blank—that means trouble.

  Ylo stood and watched as the stranger clattered up the steps and vanished into the inn.

  “Those scarlet blossoms . . .” Eshiala said. “Something wrong?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  But there was. Ylo could not recall the stranger, but the stranger had obviously known Ylo. Although he had been wearing civilian clothes, he was the right age to be a soldier.

  More than five thousand men in Qoble knew Ylo by sight. Twenty thousand might be a more realistic estimate, although he would expect few to recognize him without his uniform and wolfskin cape. And yet . . . And yet he was tall for an imp; to admit that his face was memorable was not entirely vanity. Men might not like to admit it, but they noticed his looks almost as much as women did. Shandie, now, had been able to disappear in his own office, but people remembered Ylo.

  As he loaded the baggage and tied it securely, his fingers moved by themselves. His mind raced along other paths. The stranger had been surprised by the encounter, but that was understandable. The new imperor’s personal signifer should be in Hub, at court, not here in the provinces. Perhaps there was nothing sinister about that reaction.

  On the other hand, if the Covin had apprehended Ionfeu . . . If the Covin still wanted the baby impress . . .

  He should not have come to West Pass. Qoble held many more cities than just Gaaze, where the XIIth was stationed. He should have continued east and crossed by one of the other passes and gone to Angot, or even Boswood.

  Well, it was too late now. To change his plans would alarm Eshiala, and he did not want any clouds shadowing that newfound happiness of hers. He gave her a hand up and lifted Maya to her, smiling guilelessly without hearing a word she was saying.

  One pass was as good as another, anyway. The army watched them all.

  2

  Thaile had ridden the night sky like a shooting star among the aurora. At first she went north, and the balefire she had lit at the feet of the Progistes dwindled away into the dark, behind and below, until its tiny worm glow was lost to her.

  Leeb, she thought. Oh, Leeb! And, My child! I never knew my child.

  Briefly, too, she sensed the hateful figure of the Keeper as a shadowy pillar of sorrow standing huge upon the mountains, staring after her.

  Soon she crossed the coast of the Morning Sea, slipping easily through the sorcerous walls of Thume. She caught a momentary vision of the ambience of a startled old man, and knew him for the archon who kept watch over those shores. Then that was gone, also. All gone, and she was Outside, soaring just below the stars, heading north.

  A coldness closed in upon her. She had left Thume, her birthplace, the land of her people. Down there in the darkness was the sea, the clean, cold sea. She sensed ships as pinpricks and ignored them and the sleeping souls within them, but soon the coast of Guwush was ahead of her and then below. People moved there in the dark, little folk going about their business like ants deep in the soil. They were alien. She felt their strangeness and was chilled by it. Outside! She was out among the demons, and although she knew now that the demons were only people like herself, the child she once had been whimpered its terror within her. She remembered being Quole, dying with her baby under the nails of hungry gnomes a thousand years ago.

  So little magic! Here and there she sensed small glimmers, furtive movings, little flames of candle shrouded to hide their light from monsters prowling the dark, but Thume had been full of magic, warm with magic, and Outside seemed stark and cold and mundane. Then there was sea ahead of her again, blue-green northern sea that stretched on to icy, rocky, pitiless lands lit already by the first hard gleams of dawn.

  She veered, shying off from day as a doe might shy from a hunters’ fire. She headed west, into the heart of night. Far below her went cities, great huddles of people in numbers she could not comprehend. Never had she seen more than thirty or forty people gathered together, and these immense assemblages terrified her. She rose higher, higher, until she felt the stars above her head.

  She was not a bird, or a flying woman, merely a thought traversing the night. Only great power could move like that, but she knew her strength was great, for great power brought wisdom, also. She might well rank with the legendary sorcerers of ancient times: Thraine, or Is-an-Ok, or Keef.

  People and more people! Her mind reached out and everywhere found people. From Summer Sea to Winter Ocean, people. Where were the forests, the calm pools, the grassy slopes like those she loved in Thume? Overrun, all. Gone these many thousand years! Where could she find sanctuary in a world so busy? Where was peace when the land was all carved up by roads and blighted by cities and brutally disciplined into angular, working fields?

  Onward she went, onward, seeking. Seeking she knew not what.

  All her life her world has been that safe little cage. Without it, she will do what birds do when they are frightened—fly. Fly and fly. She will fly up and up, and on and on, never daring to come down. And eventually she will exhaust herself and fall helpless from the sky.

  Baze had known, then! Or suspected, at least. So had the Keeper. Perhaps it was all written in that book of prophecies. Perhaps there was no sanctuary. Perhaps she was destined to circle back at last, to perch on the twig she had left, obedience returning to the Keeper’s hand.

  Never! They had slain her love, slain her child, thrust powers upon her that she did not want. Whatever the Gods had in store for the land of Thume, it could not be more cruel than what Thume had done to Thaile. She would not save them, would not play their evil game.

  Would not become what the Keeper was.

  Still the land unrolled before her, cloaked in night that could not mask her sorcerous vision. People and more people. She would go on, go on forever and when she came to the western seas, still she would go on, never returning.

  And then she sensed an evil. It had been there all along, perhaps, but too strange for her mind to grasp, a discordant shadow upon the ambience. Now it was closer and she could no longer refuse to recognize it. It was inhuman, alien, somehow almost metallic. Intelligence without wisdom, desire without pity, a different sort of sorcery.

  The dragons are rising. Yea, dragons! That was what that black cloud signified—dragons. She knew dragons. In the Defile she had been slain by a dragon, a thousand years ago. But these were hundreds of dragons, a great blaze questing. She sensed their excitement, their joy in this glimpse of freedom, their remorseless hunger for gold or any lesser metal. She also sensed their anger and resentment as they were herded to an
other’s purpose when they wanted to disperse and plunder the riches below them. Appalled and yet fascinated, she found herself being drawn to the dragons. Who or what had strength to constrain this mighty host?

  Suddenly—danger! There was another entity in the night, another power in the ambience. Not inhuman, but more evil, enormous, and consciously evil. Dragons had no pity; they could not comprehend suffering, but this other could. It loomed over the ambience, a flickering beacon of darkness in the very center of the world. This was what drove the dragons, and now it had detected Thaile. Black tentacles of power reached out for her, querying, groping as a hand might grope in a sack. She sensed two great stony eyes peering around, looking for her—wondering, worried, dangerous eyes.

  Unless a hawk catches her first, of course, Baze had said.

  There was the hawk! There was the evil that had overthrown the wardens. Now it had caught a glimpse of Thaile. Not a proper glimpse, perhaps, just a hint. She had creaked a floorboard and the guard had raised his lantern. If the Covin was sure of what she was and where she was, it could snatch her from the sky and make her its own. Even she could not withstand so much massed power. The Keeper herself could not, or so she had said.

  As the tiny songbird might seek to dodge the plunging falcon, Thaile swooped downward in panicky flight. She made herself small and elusive in ways that words would not describe. She flitted low over the world, seeking to hide her essence behind the great bulk of the Nefer Range—but mere rock would not block those stony eyes. She rushed south over Ilrane, barely taking thought to marvel at the towering crystal sky-trees, and there she began to feel success.

  It was the dragons that saved her. If the usurper took his full attention away from the dragons, they would scatter and start to ravage and that was evidently not his plan—not yet. Even the massed power of the Covin could barely control so many. Now was not the time to go hunting wisps. Angrily the eyes turned away, the tentacles withdrew.