Demontech: Onslaught

by David Sherman

  Spinner looked around with mild apprehension; he felt ill at ease but did not know why. “Let’s eat as we ride,” he said. Nobody raised their voice to disagree. The Golden Girl reached the stallion before he did.

  They didn’t see the wolf that slinked into the campsite as soon as they were gone and gobbled up the remains of the hawk.

  They rode south through the forest for a week. Even though they had enough horses, Zweepee, the smallest of them, usually rode double with her husband. Sometimes, when they trotted for a while, one of the men dismounted and ran—Haft volunteered to run more often than the other men. Sometimes they all got off and walked.

  While they walked, Fletcher kept an eye on the ground for anything from which he could make an arrowhead. By the end of the first day he found three pieces of flint and one of obsidian that were suitable. During that afternoon, Haft brought down two rabbits for their evening meal. That night they found a tiny rivulet to camp next to. It provided them with the first fresh water for drinking and cooking they’d come across since leaving the inn. Zweepee found some tubers and onions, and she and Doli made a stew. After they ate and made tea, Fletcher boiled more water to make glue from the rabbit skins. While the skins were boiling down, he used a large granite pebble to flake away at the flint and obsidian. One piece of flint was too flawed, but the other two yielded three usable arrowheads, and the obsidian yielded two more. Rabbit sinew served as cord to bind the arrowheads to the shafts. Five arrows weren’t many, but at least he could use his bow. But by then it was too dark to test it.

  The bow Spinner had taken from The Burnt Man wasn’t a particularly good one, but it was serviceable. Fletcher proved its usefulness the next day when he brought down a small deer for their dinner. Between the men’s hunting and Zweepee’s broad knowledge of wild plants—knowledge that came as a surprise to everyone except Fletcher—they wound up eating well. And, as they went, Fletcher found more stones for arrowheads and cut more shafts. He soon had a deerskin quiver full of arrows.

  Despite the time spent in hunting and gathering, Spinner estimated they were traveling almost twice as fast as he and Haft had when walking through Bostia to Skragland. The horses might not have been twice as fast as moving on foot, but the small party never had to stop to hide from patrols or take detours around villages or enemy campsites; nobody seemed to live in the vast forest. So long as they could ignore the reason for their flight through the forest and not think of the rumored Jokapcul invasion of Zobra, life felt good. They lacked only a stream large enough for them to bathe in and to wash their clothing.

  There was enough left of the deer Fletcher brought down two days earlier to last them another day or two, but because they hadn’t taken the time to smoke it, the meat was turning. It was ripe enough that none of them had eaten more than lightly of it that night, but thanks to a brace of quail Spinner bagged, no one had to go without meat. What remained of the deer was hung on a tripod over the damped fire in hope that the smoke might render it fit to feed them again.

  Spinner had first watch. He was feeling edgy, as he had ever since the first morning on their journey south. He’d had the feeling they were being watched. As soon as the others were sleeping, he walked into the trees as though seeking to relieve himself. Once out of the dim circle of light cast by the banked fire, he softly padded in an enlarging spiral around the campsite. After three ever-wider revolutions without finding a watcher or any sign of one, he decided nobody was there and turned back toward the campsite. Just before he reached it, a scream pierced the night. Spinner burst into the circle of light in time to see a large wolf rip the deer carcass from its tripod and dash into the night. Doli sat upright, her wide eyes staring over the hands she held clapped to her face.

  Before Spinner could chase the wolf to reclaim their food, Doli leaped to her feet and threw herself on him, wrapping her arms around his neck.

  Instantly, the others were on their feet, weapons in hand, gathering around Spinner and Doli, looking madly about for the attackers.

  “Put your weapons down,” Spinner said, his voice muffled by the cloud of Doli’s hair enveloping his face. “There’s nobody here.” He pried Doli’s arms from his neck. “Doli was frightened by a hungry wolf that came after our venison.”

  Haft knelt at the remains of the tripod, then picked up the thong that had held the carcass and looked at the others in amazement. “It’s not bitten through,” he said. “It’s not broken either.”

  Fletcher bent close to look and said, “It looks like someone untied it.”

  “It—it—” Doli stammered. She swallowed to gain control of her voice, then continued, “The wolf was licking at the thong when I saw it.”

  Spinner took the thong from Fletcher and examined it. How could a wolf untie a knot in a leather thong? Clearly the thong hadn’t been bitten through or broken. He looked at the others with wonder.

  They discussed the astonishing wolf for some time before anyone was ready to try to sleep. The wolf did not reappear that night.

  They were subdued in the morning, and Haft was the only one to mention their visitor. He cursed under his breath, staring at his meatless breakfast. “That wolf ever shows himself to me, I’ll kill him,” he muttered.

  That day the men killed a fawn, so they had meat that evening and the next morning. During his watch that night, Spinner hid a small portion of the meat to leave behind for the wolf. He no longer had the uncomfortable feeling of being secretly watched; he was certain that what he had sensed was the wolf following them.

  Much of the time on their travels south they heard, off to their left and muted by distance, the din of the refugees fleeing north and south, from one invasion into another. But they weren’t always close enough to the road to hear its noises; if an easier route opened that took them away from it, they followed that route for a time. And they often followed game trails that took them away from the highway, though they never followed game trails far; game had become too plentiful in the vicinity. Now and then they caught sight of the wolf flitting through the trees. They never saw him long enough for Haft to get off a shot, not even when Haft carried his crossbow armed. Spinner didn’t let him chase after the animal. And every night, Spinner left a chunk of meat for the wolf.

  During those days on the march, Fletcher made more arrow shafts and found enough appropriate stones to mount heads on all of them; he was satisfied when he had forty arrows. Spinner found an oak tree that was right for a new quarterstaff.

  They rarely saw anyone, and when they did, it was always a hungry refugee foraging for food. But on mid-afternoon on the sixth day, they finally saw something other than the unremitting forest and the occasional refugee.

  FOURTH INTERLUDE

  THE BARGAIN

  A Speculation on the Earliest Days in the Alliance Between Lord Lackland,

  Self-styled “Dark Prince,” and

  the “High Shoton” of Jokapcul

  by Scholar Munch Mu’sk

  Professor of Far Western Studies

  University of the Great Rift

  (excerpted from The Proceedings of the Association of Anthropological Scholars of Obscure Cultures, Vol. 57, No. 9, Supp. A)

  As has been noted in an earlier paper, Lord Lackland, accompanied by a Jokapcul knight whose name has not become known to the international community, stealthily made his way by small ship from the Kingdom of Matilda to Kokudo in the Jokapcul Islands. How the small ship reached Kokudo is not known with any certainty. Some accounts have it that under cover of night the ship slunk timidly to the Kokudo coast several miles from the main harbor of the island, let the two men off in a dinghy, then sailed away before its two passengers even reached the shore. Other accounts claim the ship sailed boldly into the harbor in bright daylight. The most likely scenario, however, is the one that has the small ship intercepted at sea by Jokapcul fisher-craft and escorted into the harbor under armed guard.

  By whatever means Lord Lackland arrived in Kokudo, he was under the pro
tection of the nameless knight he had freed and was thus not subject to instantaneous death or enslavement upon arrival. The two men were taken directly to the High Shoton, where Lord Lackland quickly attempted to convince the shoton that he knew a great deal about sea craft and seacraft, information that, as we have seen, he believed would be of great benefit to the High Shoton.

  The High Shoton is said to have been impressed by Lord Lackland’s knowledge of ships and sailing, but the shoton and his kamazai saw no need to retain the services of the half bastard fourth son of Good King Honritu, and were prepared to have him put to the sword immediately. As has been noted in an earlier paper, the islands of Jokapcul had long since been deforested, thus the Jokapcul had little use for Lord Lackland’s knowledge of sea craft, which is to say they lacked the necessary wherewithal to build new, larger, and properly seaworthy ships. So as impressed as the High Shoton may have been with Lord Lackland’s knowledge of sea craft, that knowledge was essentially worthless to him. Furthermore, the High Shoton believed, with some justification, that the Jokapcul fishermen had sufficient knowledge of seamanship, rendering Lord Lackland’s knowledge of the field of little import or value to the High Shoton’s conquistadorial ambitions.

  It is possible that Lord Lackland was much chagrined by this turn of events, which deprived him of the use of an arcane body of knowledge he had acquired only through great effort. However, he still had what is called in the common parlance “a trump in the hole.” From reports of Jokapcul raids on Matilda that came into his hands, Lord Lackland already knew that these coastal raids were made without benefit of magicians. His surreptitious meetings with the nameless Jokapcul knight imprisoned in the dungeons of Good King Honritu had confirmed that, in fact, the Jokapcul army had no magicians. It is speculated that no shoton was willing to have anyone around him who could control demons; such persons would be too great a threat. Lord Lackland’s trump was his knowledge of magic. The High Shoton, despite history going against him, quickly grasped the value of magicians to his army—not to omit mention of magic’s equal or greater value to the continuation of his own power—provided he could control the practitioners of magic.

  When Lord Lackland presented his trump to the High Shoton, the Jokapcul chieftain stayed the planned execution of his illustrious prisoner so as to consider this new matter. To that end, the High Shoton reassembled the kamazai of his court for an extended consultation on the matter of the military value of magic. Some of the kamazai quickly grasped the merit of using magic; others, more traditional in their approach to military matters, saw no merit in its use at all. Historically, it was said, Jokapcul forces had performed in exemplary fashion without the use of magic, and it was said that such arcana were distinctly un-Jokapculian. The recently converted proponents of the use of magic counterargued that, historically, Jokapcul armies had only engaged other Jokapcul armies, conflicts in which neither of the opposing forces had the service of practitioners of the arcane arts. Moreover, said the proponents, one reason for the lack of success of the Jokapcul raids on the mainland was the use of magic by the mainlanders, which use gave them an advantage over the raiders. However, that particular allegation is disputable, since the army of the Kingdom of Matilda was not known to use magic.

  The issue was not resolved until the High Shoton brought Lord Lackland into the deliberations and had him propound the multitude of advantages practitioners of the arcane arts provided to an army, the commanders of which were perspicacious enough to utilize them to greatest advantage. The use of imbaluris as messengers appealed little to many of the kamazai, and gained few converts, as the kamazai were strongly independent and seldom desired to call upon other kamazai for aid or to coordinate their activities. Neither were they greatly impressed by the healing magics; the overwhelming number of their casualties were common soldiers, whose lives they held in what can most charitably be called low esteem. Whilst they were inclined to disbelieve Lord Lackland’s tales of phoenix eggs and demon spitters, the doubting kamazai could not fail to see the immense advantages possession of such powers would bestow upon those who had command of them. Should they, indeed, exist.

  Consequently, the overwhelming majority of the kamazai recommended to the High Shoton that he grant to Lord Lackland a reasonable, but short, measure of time to demonstrate his command of magic and its value to the armies of Jokapcul. It is likely that, having heard of phoenix eggs, demon spitters, werecats, and other magical implements, the High Shoton would himself have indefinitely stayed the execution of his distinguished prisoner, but it suited him to have his kamazai firmly behind him on the matter. It is said that those kamazai who remained unconvinced by Lord Lackland’s presentation did not remain kamazai—or alive—for more than another day.

  Lord Lackland was accorded everything he needed to bring demons under his control and to bend them to the uses of the Jokapcul army. The tomes he is reputed to have conjured, once interpreted, are said to have given the Jokapcul army strength far in excess of the power held by any other army of any time or place.

  Lord Lackland possessed another area of knowledge that was of value to the Jokapcul—geography. Jokapcul knowledge of the geography and peoples of other lands was, as Lord Lackland quickly learned, abysmal. The High Shoton, upon being appraised of the geographical knowledge possessed by Lord Lackland, commanded his geographers to meet with him for the purpose of determining whether his knowledge was of value to Jokapcul raiders. The geographers, following lengthy consultation with Lord Lackland, concluded that they had a great deal to learn from him of the lands into which the raiders went.

  A story has circulated that the High Shoton one day asked Lord Lackland why he would aid the Jokapcul by making them better soldiers and providing them with hitherto unknown magic and geographical knowledge, thus making them more threatening to the mainlanders, of whom he was one. Lord Lackland replied that he desired to overthrow the unjust rule of King Honritu and claim his own rightful position as King of Matilda, a position denied him by the basest accident of birth. The High Shoton is said to have feigned amusement at the explanation.

  As for the High Shoton himself, he foresaw a campaign of world conquest that would distract the clan chiefs and other disaffected personages of Jokapcul from their grievances with him. Moreover, he is thought to have concluded that if it became known to the nation-states being invaded that Lord Lackland was behind or connected with the invasions, that knowledge would deflect some of their anger from Jokapcul and might cause rifts among the nation-states of Nunimar, thereby weakening their ability to join forces together against the conquering armies of Jokapcul, whose armies would consequently attain greater and more rapid success in their campaigns. It is probable that the High Shoton saw great gain for himself in a public and widely known alliance between himself and Lord Lackland; he cancelled the planned, albeit unscheduled, execution of Lord Lackland and agreed to ally with him.

  But the alliance between the High Shoton and Lord Lackland was not bandied abroad for several years, during which time the tomes were interpreted and their knowledge and magic incorporated into Jokapcul tactics.

  When the High Shoton was assured by his kamazai, his geographers, and by Lord Lackland, that all was in readiness, he ordered the first invasion of Nunimar that was more than a coastal raid. That invasion wasn’t made against the Kingdom of Matilda, which would have accomplished the stated objective of enthroning Lord Lackland as king of his natal kingdom. Instead it was conducted against the Duchy of Rumpole, directly to the south of Matilda. That accomplished several things for the High Shoton: it served as a method of proving the new tactics and the magic of his army, one that would not prove too costly should it go awry; the Duchy of Rumpole was much weaker than was Matilda; and a successful invasion there would drive a physical wedge between Matilda and the coastal city-states along the fringes of the Impenetrable Jungle on the southwestern coast of Nunimar. Success would also mean that the sea lanes of communication between Matilda in the north and Bostia and
the Kondive Islands to the south would be disrupted. In addition, victory in Rumpole would allow a wedge to be driven between Matilda and the Land of the Dwarves and Elfwood-Between-the-Rivers, inland from it. It is unlikely, however, that the High Shoton entertained any notion of driving a wedge between Matilda and the High Steppes, where Matilda and the nomads were in a near constant state of war. Lord Lackland was positioned prominently as leader of the invasion. To make the invasion look as if it were inspired by the Kingdom of Matilda, the kamazai commanding the expedition left his proper rank at home and took the title of general, and had it broadcast about that he was a mercenary in the employ of Honritu. According to travelers’ tales and other reports—not all of which are to be accorded equal credence—during the years of preparation for the invasion of Rumpole, Lord Lackland’s ambition grew from becoming king of Matilda to becoming emperor of all of western Nunimar.

  For a time the subterfuge worked; the earliest reports of the large-scale invasions on the western coast of Nunimar and on the southwestern coast and the seaways laid them at the feet of Good King Honritu. The subterfuge proved so successful that to this day the Kingdom of Matilda is roundly condemned for its part in the invasions and largely isolated diplomatically. Thus, one of the strongest and most capable nation-states in the civilized world is unable to bring its might in concert with other nation-states to fight off the Jokapcul invasion.