The Raven Collection

by James Barclay

  ‘So what do we do?’ asked Izack. ‘How do we stop them?’

  ‘Now’s the time to be fighting harder than you ever have at every gate. Every one of them that dies or is forced to fight until exhaustion is a victory. I know we’ll suffer losses too but we’ll have the psychological edge. And when they try to break through the north gate as they will, we need to have enough men and mages in reserve to chase them. Don’t forget, we can’t abandon the siege or we’ll be just inviting more Xeteskian warriors to chase up to Julatsa. We cannot allow them to know we are reinforcing the north gate lines. We must make them fight to keep their city even while they run to attack Julatsa and reclaim the writings and, if they’re lucky, Erienne, when they guess her identity.’

  ‘But that’s the trick, though, isn’t it?’ said Izack wearily. ‘How do we manage our resources to manufacture a meaningful reserve? How can we take most of our men from the fight east, south and west and still keep the pressure up on Xetesk?’

  Darrick smiled. ‘Well, that’s why I’m here, talking to you now.’

  ‘Good,’ said The Unknown. ‘Then I suggest we leave you two to it. We’re going in tomorrow night so work to that timescale. I’m sure Auum will agree we should wait no longer. Meanwhile . . .’ He stood up, his eyes on Thraun who had remained completely still, staring into the shadows beyond the fire. ‘Thraun, come and talk to me. I want to know what’s wrong.’

  The shapechanger fixed him with a sullen look.

  ‘Now.’ The Unknown’s tone brooked no dissension.

  Hirad watched The Unknown put an arm round Thraun’s tense shoulders and firmly but gently guide him from the fire. Deciding to get himself some soup, Hirad brushed himself down and ambled over to the cook pots. He caught Denser’s troubled gaze.

  ‘How bad?’ he asked, stirring the thick broth. ‘Want some of this?’

  Denser shook his head. ‘Very bad. Very bad indeed.’

  ‘How long have we got?’

  Denser half shrugged and glanced at Rebraal who was translating for Dila’heth.

  ‘That’s the problem,’ he said. ‘We can’t know. They’ve had one instance of mana-flow failure and the focus around the Heart isn’t complete. They say it’s like a shadow, leaching colour from the Julatsan mana spectrum. One day, soon probably, that shadow will deepen enough to stop the Heart beating and even now it’s spreading out, weakening every casting they make. Put it this way, the longer we delay, the harder it will be to reverse. It’s terrifying.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes, Hirad, it is. To a mage, losing contact with the mana spectrum is the worst thing that could possibly happen. It would be like a living death. Like living in a Cold Room the rest of your life. How can I make you understand? I don’t know . . . for you the closest thing would be like losing the use of your sword arm. It would be hanging there, you’d know it was there but you just couldn’t use it. Send you mad, wouldn’t it?’

  Hirad nodded. ‘Well, let’s not spend too much time in Xetesk, eh?’

  ‘I’m with you there.’

  The Unknown Warrior didn’t take Thraun far. Just beyond the firelight and into the trees. He’d looked anxious; perhaps the woodland, such as it was, would calm him.

  ‘Thraun?’ The Unknown stopped and turned the shapechanger to face him. ‘What’s bothering you? Even for you, this is quiet and withdrawn. We need you with us all the way inside Xetesk. It’s going to be tough in there.’

  ‘We can touch our enemies,’ said Thraun, leaving The Unknown momentarily at a loss.

  ‘No, Thraun,’ he replied. ‘These aren’t our enemies. They still want what we want but with regard to us they’re misguided.’

  ‘He will betray us,’ said Thraun, nodding his head toward the camp.

  ‘Izack? You’ve got that wrong. He’s as loyal to Darrick as we are to each other. He’s—’

  Thraun gripped The Unknown’s arm hard.

  ‘He won’t mean to,’ he said, and The Unknown could see him struggling for the words that just refused to come. His green eyes, yellow-tinged, shone with moisture in the dim flicker of the fire to their right and his face was pinched, angry. He swallowed. ‘He won’t mean to, but he isn’t Darrick.’

  ‘What? Thraun, please. Try to explain what you mean.’

  But the shapechanger was looking away towards Xetesk, sniffing the air, tasting its quality.

  ‘I see what the wolf sees,’ he said.

  The Unknown started. It was the first direct allusion to Thraun’s acceptance of his other self that he’d uttered in years. Somewhere inside his mind, another wall had fallen.

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ he said.

  ‘The air is not good here,’ Thraun continued, turning back to The Unknown. ‘I will fight with you. I am Raven. But wolves do not hunt where they will find no prey, only rotten meat. Do you see any other wolves here?’

  Chapter 11

  Dystran, Lord of the Mount of Xetesk, heard the distant roar of men and the impact of spells. He smelled the faint tang of smoke on the wind through his open windows and knew it was morning. But there was a different quality to it this morning. He dressed hurriedly, ignored the breakfast tray that had been left on his side dresser while he slept and headed down the stairs of his tower, which sat in the centre of a ring of six similar towers.

  He snapped his fingers at his personal guards on the way to the stables and waited impatiently while their horses were pulled from stalls and saddled. He knew he could have asked for opinion but he didn’t want it. Too much in this war was going on without him seeing it first-hand. At least the delay gave him time to issue a few orders, the only words he was going to utter until he stood on the ramparts above the east gate.

  ‘Bring Chandyr to me at the gate. Bring him quickly. I don’t care if he’s lying in a pool of his own blood, I want to talk to him. Second, I want an assessment of Julatsa’s strength in my briefing chambers when I come back and a man of substance to discuss it with me. Third, I want to know to the hour when we will have a dimensional alignment that will enable us to cast DimensionConnect or something similarly destructive.

  ‘Now, clear me a path to the walls, I’m a busy man.’

  One of his guards ran back towards the tower circle to pass on Dystran’s instructions. Two others mounted up and led off at a gallop towards the east gate of the college and out into the streets. The remaining three rode around Dystran as he put heels to flanks and cantered away into his city.

  He’d not ridden out for too long. It was so easy to feel that the war was going largely according to plan when safe in the cocoon of the college. When those gates closed, shutting out reality was simple, but in the streets, his people were not at ease. Businesses were dying, people were slowly but surely going hungry as his rationing measures bit harder. It was the middle of spring and at a time when the farms that supplied food to Xetesk should be green and yellow with burgeoning crops, most lay idle and overgrown or, worse, supplied his enemies.

  Dystran needed his people to understand that they’d come too far to turn back now, to surrender to the old order that would remove Xetesk’s power. Remove him. He needed them behind him, believing in the greater glory of Xetesk. For the first days of the siege, support had been so solid. His attempts to engage every citizen in the effort, make them feel involved in a struggle for their survival, had appeared to work. From stretcher teams to water carriers, soup-kitchen cooks to weapon sharpeners, everyone had been designated a task. The sense of togetherness had been extraordinary.

  How quickly that support was waning. Barely forty days into the battle and they were losing faith. The eyes turned to him were scared, angry or both. He could understand the fear. None of them was allowed to witness the fighting unless directed for support duty and that meant, for most, that all they had was what they could hear, and the rumours that came back day by day. Most were exaggerated, some verged on being lies. Yet there was little Dystran could realistically do. In the absence of obvious signs of victor
y, minds naturally turned the other way and doom was easier to share over a few drinks.

  It had been such a hard path to walk. Trying to keep his people believing in him but not letting them know why they had to suffer the torment of war outside their walls. War they couldn’t see but that could engulf them, should the tide turn against them.

  How could Dystran tell them that all they had to do was wait a few more days? If he did, his enemies would know too and that he could not afford.

  ‘Just hold on,’ he whispered as he passed faces turned to him in desperation. ‘Just hold on.’

  He rode through the military positions behind the east gates, positions mirrored at all four portals into the city. Waved through guard posts and directed down cleared channels, he made towards the great closed gate itself. Seventy feet high, iron-bound doors in frames of stone, sweeping a hundred and more feet into the sky to meet at the apex of the grand east gate tower. The spired tower boasted three ornate arches from which his generals would be directing the battle half a mile away on open ground, safe above multiple oil runs and reinforced ramparts.

  Either side of the gate tower, the dun-coloured city walls ran away, a mile and more, studded with archer turrets and guard posts, quiet now with so much of his force concentrated around the main battle sites. But the walls themselves were surely deterrent enough. Founded deep in the earth and with internal buttressing, the walls sloped very slightly outwards as they rose some seventy feet tall, as high as the gates. They had never been breached and it gave Dystran great comfort to imagine the sheer size of any force that could genuinely threaten the sanctity of the city.

  But, like any walled settlement, the gates were the weak points.

  He dismounted, the noise assaulting his ears as he did so. Of hundreds of feet rushing everywhere in pursuit of orders; voices raised to bellow new instructions; forges hammering out new weapons, horseshoes, and repairing battered armour. The temperature had to be twenty degrees higher than in the college. To his left, steam covered the entrance to a kitchen and behind it, Dystran knew his men lay dying, dragged from the field every day.

  But many more lay ready, fit and waiting for the order to advance. That day was close but not even his generals knew how close. Only Dystran and Ranyl knew. Any card he retained he had to guard with care.

  Dystran double-stepped up the spiral stairways that curved around the gate turrets, his feeling of unease growing. He ran along the first rampart tier and up the central stairways into the tower proper. Reaching the central arch, he found Chandyr already there . . . and saw for himself the sacrifice being made in the name of Xetesk and its Lord of the Mount. He leaned on the uncomfortable but beautifully carved balustrade and stared out at the battle, what little he could see of it.

  The recent dry weather had dried the topsoil and a cloud of dust hung over the scene of battle, thickened by smoke from fires and spell impact. Dystran could just about make out the opposing fighting lines in the fog. The Xeteskian line, some five hundred yards wide, was laid in a disciplined curve held firm by Protectors at ten points.

  The huge masked warriors led the defence, provided communication along the entire fighting line at the speed of thought and fed confidence into his men. Dystran could imagine the Soul Tank, deep in the catacombs of the college, boiling with activity. Even though they fought individually, the Protectors operated with one mind, those close to brothers engaged in combat directing attention towards threat and opportunity. It made them the awesome force they were. So difficult to break down, so damaging to enemy morale.

  Behind the front line, reserves stood waiting, shouting encouragement, pulling away the injured and plugging gaps in the line. Further behind, mages stood or sat in knots, with guards in close attendance. Some directed offensive spells across the lines into enemy support, others maintained the shield lattices against spell and missile attack.

  Completing the picture were his archers and cavalry, both mobile, both with their own mage defence, and deployed tactically. The archers kept enemy mages busy with spell defence, the cavalry were in three loose groups, left, right and centre, positioned to counter surges by enemy swordsmen and cavalry, or take advantage of any weakness in the enemy line.

  Dystran watched as the centre of the enemy line pushed hard, dragging men into the swell of battle. Steel glinted through the smoke and dust. The roar of voices increased. From behind the enemy warriors, spells arced into the sky. FlameOrbs, green- or yellow-tinged and trailing steam, the superheated mana balls rose and fell into the mage and archer lines behind. Deep blue shields repulsed, sheeting light over their charges. The power of the enemy spells dissipated into the ground, kicking up spats of dirt.

  And behind the barrage came the arrows and, with a flash of weapons and thunder of hooves, the cavalry. They forged in heavy on the left flank. It was a thrilling sight. Dystran winced as the Xeteskian cavalry surged forward to meet them between the two main lines.

  The opposing forces met, breaking into small groups with individual battles fought out in the mass of men and horses. And, riding across the back of the attack, came the Lysternan commander, plugging a weakness with an individual charge of breathtaking ability, weaving through a gap Dystran didn’t even see from his distance and striking a Xeteskian cavalryman from his mount.

  He could have been Darrick. In fact, the whole attack could have been masterminded by the former general, so classically was it executed.

  The Xeteskian mages and archers responded. The air thickened with arrows. DeathHail hammered onto metal, ground and shield. HotRain fizzed into existence, each drop trailing smoke. HellFire thrashed from the clear skies, its brief roar eclipsing every other sound. The Lysternan shielding flashed green, repelling what it could. Choking smoke billowed afresh into the air. At the periphery of the lattice, a SpellShield failed, telltale black spots rippling as HellFire hit it with too much force to be contained. With a clap like thunder, the Xeteskian spell drove through. Beneath it, the knot of archers had no chance whatsoever.

  Dystran watched on a few more moments, happy that this latest enemy surge would be turned away. But, just as when he awoke, there was a nagging in his mind that something significant had changed. He hadn’t seen enough of the fighting to put his finger on it. Fortunately, he was standing next to a man who had.

  ‘Tell me, Commander Chandyr. What is it that is different about today?’

  Chandyr smiled and turned briefly from the battle to look at his lord. He was an experienced soldier, weathered face crossed with scars from the skirmishes that were a fact of life for any career soldier. Dark circles around his eyes told of his overlong hours on duty but still they retained their energy.

  ‘I could have done with you in the army, my Lord,’ he said. ‘Most of my advisers have noticed nothing.’

  ‘But you have.’

  ‘Several changes and I should tell you that this is happening on all fronts and I have been forced to bring up some reserve, for the morning at least. First, they are pushing harder than at any time in the last ten days, leading me to think they suspect we’ll be launching an offensive soon. Second, the elven mages are few and far between, telling me they are either resting, unsure of their ability to cast, or both. Third, right now I can’t see enough elven fighters. And that is the strangest of all since there are more in the front line than I’ve seen since the siege started.’

  ‘Reinforcements?’

  ‘Where from?’ asked Chandyr. ‘And given that they want to break us, why haven’t we seen them in tandem with the elves before now?’

  Dystran chuckled. ‘My dear Chandyr, you are the military mind. I rather think I should be asking that question of you.’

  ‘Apologies, my Lord, I’m thinking out loud.’ Chandyr cleared his throat. ‘I can only surmise that they have found some new mercenaries or perhaps that one of the Barons has been persuaded to lend his support. Whatever, it has given the bulk of the elves time to rest and regroup and I think that is significant. They are wait
ing for us to act and they will be ready.’

  ‘Your thoughts?’ asked Dystran.

  ‘There is little open to us, my Lord. Whatever your timetable, I suggest you stick to it. We also should not change our plan to attack through the north gate; any other leaves us in the open for long enough to lose the effect of surprise. I don’t think the elves are planning an assault, that would be futile but we had to expect them to expect us to force the pace at some stage.’

  ‘Thank you, Commander,’ said Dystran.

  ‘My Lord?’

  Dystran turned to be faced by an anxious-looking youth wearing the armband of a messenger.

  ‘Speak up,’ said Dystran.

  ‘I am ordered to tell you from your college guard captain that he has found something you need to see urgently.’ There was an uncertain smile.

  Dystran nodded. ‘Very well. Go and get some food from the kitchen and get back to your post. Well done.’

  The messenger bowed and ran back the way he had come. Dystran shook Chandyr’s hand.

  ‘Keep me informed. Anything out of the ordinary and I must know it. Our time is close. Be ready.’

  ‘Always, my Lord.’

  A canter back through the city and Dystran was intercepted at the college gates by Captain Suarav, the most senior college guard soldier. Like Chandyr, a career in the military had left him cynical and scarred, older than his forty years, but his sense of duty and loyalty shone out. He was a man Dystran instinctively liked and trusted. Dystran smiled to himself. Ranyl would remind him of his like and trust of Yron, hero turned betrayer. He wondered briefly what had happened to him. Dead, he presumed, and probably at the hands of an elf. Fitting.

  ‘My Lord, I wouldn’t normally bother you but I felt you should see this in person before it was cleared.’