Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones

by Vox Day

  The legate nodded and mounted his horse then rode toward the far side of the field where the others were crouched on their haunches and gathered in a circle. He extricated Marcus from the game and sent him riding back to Corvus.

  Corvus nodded at his son, who dismounted and regarded him quizzically. Corvus smiled and smacked him hard enough on his steel-armored shoulder to rock the boy sideways. How tall his son had grown, and what an unmitigated pleasure it was to see him in the attire that was good and proper for a son of House Valerius!

  “Have you any thoughts about tomorrow, Tribune?”

  “I do, lots of them.” His son finally stopped hiding behind the junior officer’s mask and shook his head ruefully. “Very little of which has anything to do with what you and Marcus Saturnius were discussing. But it did strike me that you’re taking an approach that is relatively similar to the one Flaminius used against the Trinatine orcs. I hope it will work out as well for us.”

  “So all that scholarly training has served you after all!” Corvus smiled again, pleased to learn that the boy was taking his service seriously. “Have you got a copy of Moridides in that little library of yours? I think you might find his Taktikon of interest.”

  “No, I heard it was worth reading, but the centurions kept us so busy that I never got around to having one copied.”

  “Saturnius has one. I’ll see that he sends it to you. In fact, you can probably keep it, I doubt he’s ever unrolled it, much less read it.”

  “Really? Never? And he’s had it how long?” He shook his head. “Thank you, Father, but I will copy it myself and return it to him. I find I recall the material better if I write it down.”

  “You’re not a scribe anymore, you know. But listen to me, Marcus. You have to understand that reading is not the only way for a man to learn. Nothing you’ve ever read, nothing any man’s hand has ever written, will prepare you for what you’re going to see, and hear, and feel tomorrow.”

  Corvus stared out across the meadow toward the direction from which the goblins would come, remembering his first battle. The waiting. That was what he remembered most. The waiting. And then the fear. He must have lapsed into silence, because his son cleared his throat.

  Corvus looked seriously at Marcus. “It’s beyond our limits to envision. The terror that grips your belly when you first catch sight of the foe in all his numbers. The horror of seeing your comrade’s face split open by an axe. The fierce pride in your men when they stand fast and turn back the enemy. The relief that weakens your knees when you suddenly realize it’s all over…I can tell you these things, but until tomorrow, they’ll only be words. Battle isn’t words. It is sounds and sights and smells, and some of them are more terrible than you can imagine.”

  Especially the smells. He grimaced. Every time, he thought he would be ready for them. And every time, he was wrong.

  Marcus nodded, equally grave. “I think you’re essentially describing the distinction between the form and the substance of knowledge. In this case, the true knowledge of battle isn’t the abstract form one constructs from the descriptions of others after the fact, but that which can only be obtained through the varied phenomena experienced within it.”

  Corvus stared at his son, nonplussed. “For the love of all that’s clean and holy, please tell me you don’t talk to your knights like that.”

  “No, Father. In the course of my admittedly brief career, I have learned their two preferred subjects of discussion are the women they have known in the past and the women they anticipate knowing in the future.” Marcus laughed. “When they’re not gambling, that is. Their interest in philosophy is best described as de minimis.”

  “Yes, you’re not the first to observe that the interests of the Amorran soldiery tend to be limited and focused primarily on the distaff.” Corvus suddenly had a very vivid picture of what the look on the first decurion’s face would be if Marcus were to offer a few of his more esoteric observations, complete with citations, in company with his orders. He laughed.

  It was at times like these, when this young man spoke at such heights, that Corvus found himself wondering if it were somehow possible that Romilia had been less than perfectly faithful to him. He had been away on campaign a great deal in the first years of their marriage, after all, and she was a highly sought-after beauty. On the other hand, he couldn’t think of a single suitor of hers possessed of a mind inclined toward his son’s scholarly predilections either.

  “Very well, Tribune, shall we not acquaint ourselves with the true knowledge of the hill upon which you and your cousin will be commanding the right flank? It is one thing to envisage the abstract form of its degree of incline, and another to experience exactly how difficult it would be for a thousand screaming goblins on wolfback hell-bent on ripping out your throat to ride up it.”

  Marcus didn’t answer, but he did look ever so slightly pale. It seemed that even scholarly young philosophers could be moved to emotion by contemplating the abstract form of violent death in battle. Corvus chuckled and strode toward the gentle incline that marked the beginning of the hill.

  Before too long, both of them were standing at the summit, breathing hard.

  Corvus stretched out his arm to encompass the breadth of the field visible from their vantage point.

  “Do you see that tree there?” He pointed to a tall maple on the southern edge of the field with bright yellow leaves that had not yet begun to fall. Its colors stood out clearly against the browns and reds of its neighbors on three sides. The ground between it and them stretched nearly a third of the way to the field’s western end. “If the scouts are right, that’s about where their last rank will be.”

  Marcus didn’t answer. He was still breathing heavily but faster and louder than before. Corvus moved closer to his son and put his arm around son’s crimson-cloaked shoulders. Slowly, surely, the young man’s breathing slowed until he relaxed with a deep sigh.

  “It’s different when your mind sees the clear picture, isn’t it? Don’t worry, though. You will be afraid, Marcus. Of course you will. It’s not only normal, it’s necessary. A man who faces battle without fear isn’t brave—he’s little more than an animal who neither knows nor cares if he lives or dies. And a young man with your imagination, well, I expect that in some ways, you may even find the real thing to be less dreadful than whatever nightmare you’ve concocted inside your head.

  “It’s a test of your manhood, but it is a test I know you will pass. You are a true Valerian, and no man bearing the Valerius name has ever failed the test of battle. Even when the battle went badly. In four hundred years we Valerians have been defeated, we have retreated, and we have died where we stood, but not a single one has ever shown himself a coward. You will not be the first.”

  “What’s it like?” Marcus asked in a voice barely more than a whisper. “In Elebrion, when the false priests attacked the embassy, everything happened so fast. I didn’t even have time to be afraid. I simply reacted and did what I had to do. And on patrol, in all the skirmishes we’ve fought, we always defeated them so easily that it seemed more like hunting than warfare. But here, seeing the field and taking in the scale of what will come, it’s almost beyond comprehension!”

  Corvus laughed. “That’s the advantage Marcus Saturnius has over you and me. He has absolutely no imagination. He doesn’t see the individual men that make up the centuries and he isn’t impressed by the magnitude of the numbers involved. To him, it’s nothing more than a problem of basic geometry, and he goes about solving it without being distracted by the overall picture. That’s why he’s a better tactician than me. Of course, that’s also why I’m a better strategist than he is. Strategy requires imagination. Tactics take focus.

  “As for what it’s like…it’s not real. I mean, war is real, of course, but it truly doesn’t feel real. There is so much happening on every side around you that it often seems as if you’re standing outside your body. You can see and hear everything, but it doesn’t really feel as if any
of it has anything to do with you.”

  Marcus kicked at the turf at his feet. “That sounds strange. I don’t know what I was expecting you would say, but it certainly wasn’t that.”

  “I don’t know how else to describe it. My first campaign was under Falconius Carnifex during the Fifth Tribute War. At times during the first two battles against the Eprani, it was as if I wasn’t even there. I remember that both times I felt …detached. Yes, detached—that describes it.

  “I remember seeing a spear strike the man standing next to me. It hit him just above the breastplate. He staggered back and fell to his knees, as you can probably imagine, and all I could think about at the time was how strange the expression on his face was just as he collapsed to the ground. I stood there, staring at him lying on the blood-stained grass, and I didn’t pay attention to anything else until the centurion slapped me.”

  “The centurion?” Marcus asked incredulously. “He hit you?”

  “Oh, yes. Carnifex didn’t believe in coddling his tribunes. He threw us right into the front lines from the start, although at least we were usually assigned to the veteran cohorts. He went through tribunes the way a messenger goes through horses. But if you survived him, you knew you had the respect of the infantry. They considered you one of them, a proper legionary, not a knight or a patrician.”

  “I can’t imagine the Houses appreciated his method of instruction.”

  Corvus snorted and shook his head. Every tribune lost meant a noble house lost a potential heir. “No, they most certainly did not. That was why his cousin, Falconius Bardus, was commanding the legion in my second campaign. One of the Caerans drowned Carnifex in the baths when he returned to Amorr over the winter. Titus Caerus was one of the tribunes killed in the lines during the second battle against the Eprani when the sixth cohort was overrun, and it was his father who killed Carnifex.”

  His son wasn’t listening. He was pointing toward the far end of the field instead. “Look, they’re coming back.” Sure enough, Saturnius and the five riders accompanying him were cantering across the prospective battlefield toward them.

  “Come around this way. They’ll untether our horses and meet us as they ride up the center.” Corvus whistled at Saturnius and pointed to the horses; the legate waved back in response.

  A little less nimble at his age than his athletic son, he was several steps behind Marcus as they ran and occasionally slid down the gentler incline on the southern side of the hill.

  “Did you see anyone chasing them?” Marcus called back to him.

  “No, nothing. There can’t be any wolves too close behind, or they’d be riding harder.”

  Once they reached the area where Corvus intended to establish the legion’s center and station the first cohort, they came to a stop, since the others had already reached the horses and were pulling out the spikes that prevented them from roaming. Corvus had never felt more alive. He laughed and once more put his arm around his son. God in Heaven, but the boy was as tall as he was!

  “It may be hard tomorrow, but I’m so glad you’re here, Marcus. I know as a boy you must have wondered where your father was all those years. This is where I’ve been all along—waiting for you to join me. This is what we are, this is who we are, this is what we were made for!”

  His son looked over at him. There was a half-smile on his lips. “It’s strange. As children, we’re told we must love our fathers. We’re told we must respect them. But I hardly knew mine.”

  Corvus nodded, unperturbed. He knew that, in some ways, Magnus was more the boy’s father than he was. He certainly could take little credit for what a fine example of patrician youth Marcus had become. He’d given the boy his height perhaps, but he bore the unmistakable signs of Romilia’s beauty and Magnus’s upbringing. And only God knew where he’d gotten his mind.

  “But now that I’m one of your soldiers,” his son continued, “I can see why your men love their general as they do. I was afraid when I was standing up there, imagining the terrible scope of it all for the first time. Truly seeing it. But after talking to you, I’m not afraid anymore. So, maybe this is where I was always supposed to be.”

  “Ha! If you can still say that after tomorrow, boy, perhaps I’ll believe you.” Corvus teased his son, but he felt a powerful warmth spreading out through his body from the core of his heart. “What ho, Saturnius!” he called as the legate rode toward him, leading his horse. Faberus led Marcus’s mount.

  “We’d better be moving along, Corvus,” Saturnius said. “We caught sight of a large patrol out roving, about twenty wolves. They’ll be on our scent soon, if they’re not already. I don’t know if we’ll even have to bother sending out a few squadrons to draw them here tomorrow, although we’d better plan to deploy by sunrise if we don’t want to risk them stealing a march on us.” Corvus leaped astride his horse and took the reins.

  One of the knights shouted. “They’re coming!”

  There was a rustling motion at the far end of the field, as if the trees themselves were shaking. Then wolves began to boil out of the forest like long grey wasps coming out of a hole in the ground. They were lean and low to the ground, and their scrawny, long-limbed riders looked almost like green spiders clinging to their crudely saddled backs.

  But as fast as the wolves could lope along the ground, their legs weren’t even a third as long as those of the horses the men were riding. The goblins had no chance of catching the Amorran riders in the five leagues that now separated them from the camp. And it wasn’t as if the wolfriders were likely to make a serious attempt at chasing them anyway, since they couldn’t possibly know that the patrol they’d encountered happened to include three of the legion’s command staff.

  “Will you really retreat in the face of the enemy, General?” Saturnius dared him.

  Corvus peered at the goblin riders. They would win. The seven of them could likely drive off the twenty or so wolfriders, but not without loss. And they had neither shields nor lances with them. The thought of engaging was ever so slightly tempting, but to take such a risk would be monumentally stupid. Romilia would have his ears if she ever heard of it, and more than that if Marcus got so much as a scratch.

  “Retreat?” Corvus shouted back. “Never! Let us advance—speedily—in the direction of the camp!” He kicked his horse forward into a gallop.

  He glanced over at his son, who was thundering along not far behind him, hoping that this unexpected sight of the enemy had not unmanned him in any way. He was delighted to see that Marcus had thrown back his head and was laughing at something one of the knights had said, as fey and unconcerned in the face of the foe as any of their legendary forefathers.

  Behind them, the sun’s rays were deepening from oranges and reds into scarlets and purples. Before it would rise again, Corvus knew, the seven of them would be back atop that hill overlooking the field, but in the company of nearly six thousand armed men.

  A large black crow flew overhead as they rode, and Corvus smiled up at his namesake.

  “Come back tomorrow, little brother,” he shouted at the crow. “Come back tomorrow, and I shall feed you well!”

  MARCUS

  The ragged lines of the goblin army below stretched out to the south as far as Marcus could see. The evil sound of their drums boomed rhythmically without cease, as if they were the heartbeat of a single giant beast.

  Over the drumming—and between curses directed alternatively at the legion’s scouts, its artillery, and its suppliers—Marcus heard the first decurion telling his reguntur that the army they were facing was somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand strong. Marcus tried to find some relief in the grizzled old cavalryman’s apparent lack of concern at the legion being outnumbered five to one and focused on his assigned task of counting the number of wolfriders on the enemy’s right wing.

  The enemy lines were only about one hundred paces away from the legion’s front line, but the drums, the shrieks of the crudely armed warriors, the growling and howling and whining
of their wolves, and the occasional shouting of the men behind him made it surprisingly hard to keep track of the number. The fact that the goblins were not arrayed in tidy, disciplined lines, but in loose mobs in constant movement rendered it more of an exercise in estimation than an actual count.

  It was considerable comfort to be up on the hill and on the left flank, above and well away from that teeming mass of inhumanity. He glanced back toward the center, behind the reserves, and saw the legionary standard. He couldn’t see his father, but he knew Corvus was down there somewhere. He did recognize Saturnius, though, stout and portly in his armor, waving his arms as he shouted at someone. He grinned, glad that he wasn’t the object of the legate’s ire.

  The goblins had arrayed themselves much as his father had predicted they would, although there seemed to be rather more wolves lined up on the flank facing the Marcus and the Second Knights than on the other side of the battlefield.

  “How many wolves, Tribune?” Julianus demanded.

  “I make seven hundred, perhaps seven hundred twenty, Decurion.”

  “Lucius and me both count eight hundred. Remember, it’s better to err on the side of too many than too few. Still, that’s not bad.”

  Not bad that only three hundred knights held the right flank against eight hundred enemy wolfriders? It wasn’t exactly a state he would be inclined to describe as good, either. But he held his tongue. The decurion was not a man known to appreciate wit at the best of times, and this did not seem to be a wise moment to try his temper.

  As if in response to the wolves snarling below them, Marcus’s stomach growled. He had done his best to choke down some bread and cheese when they’d been awakened before sunrise and ordered to take their position on the northernmost hill, but he’d had little appetite.

  It wasn’t that this morning would be the first time he’d ever seen combat. On his journey to the elven royal city of Elebrion with the Church embassy last year, he’d been attacked by an ulfin, a grotesque wolflike creature, although he hadn’t even managed to draw his sword and had only survived the attack thanks to the alertness of his dwarven servant, Lodi. Since the campaign began, he’d ridden on more patrols than he could count and had gotten into five skirmishes. He’d even killed his first goblin three weeks ago—two of them, in fact, when the patrol he was leading encountered a small band of raiders. But today marked his first actual battle.