He wouldn't despair, though. He wouldn't succumb to fear. Cultat was fierce, and he was a visionary. Without him no Alliance would ever have been assembled in the first place. And Praulth would not have the opportunity she now had, to engage Dardas in final decisive combat.
"Praulth..." Merse said; then, tone shifting, added, "General Praulth, I rely on you."
She looked away from Merse, down at the maps. With the speedy and meticulous intelligence she was receiving, she could keep abreast of this battle moment to moment. She could relay tactics to Cultat. She could fight the war from this very room, engage Dardas blow for blow. Her talent as a war scholar and, much more, her ability to apply that trenchant knowledge actively and effectively would determine victory or defeat for the Alliance, for the Isthmus.
Praulth didn't now pause to consider how this would affect her and her lofty future place in history. At the moment nothing seemed less important.
"Premier, mobilize your third and seventh companies. Fortify your weak strength unit in the forward rank. Bring up your cavalry on the eastward line. It's time for the Felk to meet their enemy."
* * *
A night battlefield. She knew this, knew the armies would be engaging by torchlight, by star and moonlight. The images came to her, sidling in upon the cold and clear war logic that gripped her mind. She glimpsed the liquid spill of firelight over the armored bodies. She saw the melange of Alliance troops, their varying uniforms, assembled unlike the Felk for a cause of defense. Hold these lands against the sweeping invaders from the north. That was the unifying motive. And it had thrown together peoples who had, until very recently, been traditional antagonists. This Alliance... such a hodgepodge. How could it function?
Cultat was there. Na Niroki Cultat. Premier of Petgrad. He would hold the miscellany together. He would make them work as one. Praulth would be strategizing, yes; Praulth would be deciphering the enemy's movements and concocting the countering maneuvers. But Cultat would execute the reality of this battle, and without him, all her intellectual and tactical talent would be meaningless.
If she ever saw the premier alive again, she would tell this to him. She would say it quite humbly and sincerely.
Merse's hands were busy with a number of different trinkets, items well-handled and thereby impressed by whichever Far Speak operator he was currently linked to. Actually it seemed he was communicating with several at once, a feat that had to require some effort and skill. He remained on the dais with Praulth.
"Lateral move," Merse said. Sweat stood out on his forehead. "East... here. This company, this." He was stabbing at a map with his finger, indicating a specific Felk unit.
Praulth noted it. The maneuver resonated. It had many possible meanings—feint, supporting posture, outright assault. It was idiosyncratic of Dardas. This was how he fought. He put his forces into play and moved them about in unexpected patterns. He worked deep, weaving tactics inside tactics, confusing his opponents.
But Praulth's answering movement was clear to her. A unit of Alliance archers was nearby. They were to take positions. Whatever Dardas meant to do, the Felk company would be covered.
She told this to Merse. He relayed it.
The first actual combative contact between the armies had come. The Felk had made a thrust, a foray with a unit of infantry. It wasn't meant to break the Alliance lines. It was, to Praulth's eyes, the signal that this fight wouldn't wait for the daylight. Dardas was eager. Dardas had recognized the canny trap within the trap that had been laid, and he expressly wanted it known that he could not be fooled.
Such was how Praulth interpreted the gambit. The Felk infantry had been met. The clash was quick, casualties had resulted, and the Felk thrust was withdrawn. Blood was on the ground now. It wasn't going to be the last spilled tonight.
Those deaths weren't remote to her. They weren't as the lives lost in ancient battles that she read about, times so distantly past that whole generations had died off since.
Yet she didn't allow the thought of that newly shed blood to paralyze her. Soldiers would die tonight, members of this hastily amassed Alliance, and they would die in engagements that she had devised. But they had come together to fight off the Felk. They would supply whatever sacrifices needed to be made in this cause. Praulth owed them her best efforts, her keenest wits.
"Movement," Merse said. Xink had brought him a seat, and he had fallen heavily into it. He was presently clutching a small silver medallion looped with a thong of old leather. Praulth couldn't see what it was. "Middle ranks. A company is moving forward, toward the front."
Praulth noted the place on a map. Dardas was moving a unit forward from the rear. Cavalry? Infantry?
Wizards.
Merse's weathered features were tightened across the bones of his face. Abruptly he lurched to his feet, the movement violent. The chair clattered off the dais behind him. His hand opened, and the medallion bounced off the table and rolled out of sight.
His eyes widened and shot through Praulth. "My boy," he said, voice hoarse and slight. "He's gone."
A scout lost. A valuable Far Speak scout. But the pale and sudden loss on Merse's face was something else. This was the loss of one of his children, his son. How incalculable a loss was that?
"How did it happen?" Praulth asked. She reached a hand across the table, took Merse's wrist. She meant it to be forceful, to wrench him back from his shock, to delay it until there was time for it. Instead, her touch was gentle. She held him to comfort him.
Merse's jaw moved, tiny muscles bunching below the ear. Finally he said, "Fire."
"Fire?"
"His last word."
"Wizards," Praulth said.
Merse nodded solemnly.
The Felk fire magic had been used minimally during the war so far. The Felk had until now only been overrunning villages and invading cities. These were places they meant to occupy, and they wanted these sites left relatively undamaged. Surely fire magic had played a part in U'delph's razing, but here, on this battlefield, there was nothing to hold them back from full use of this offensive magic.
"Find out the range," she said, and now her fingers did tighten around Merse's wrist.
He wasn't drifting away entirely into the shock and sorrow that was his due. He straightened up and snatched an article from his pocket, gripping it fiercely, with an air of determination. He gave her a last sharp look before the link was established and said, "I won't fail you."
Praulth knew that he wouldn't.
He relayed the information to her. Apparently the fire producing magicians could only use their talents within a fairly limited range and at a finite intensity. They couldn't, for instance, hurl great clouds of fire across the prairie at the Alliance ranks. They seemed—Praulth assimilated the rapidly incoming reports—to be able to cause combustion only among the Alliance's most advanced units. Among these had been the one that included the Far Speak scout.
Even within that range the Felk wizards were limited, it seemed. That whole unit hadn't suddenly burst into flame. Instead, an individual here and there had suffered the horrible fate, while the person standing alongside went unscathed.
They could only pick out individual targets, then, like archers did.
"Tell Cultat to advance this unit of infantry," Praulth said, pointing to a map. "Draw the wizards forward from the Felk ranks. Give them something to go after. Then send this company of cavalry—it's a strong company—on a northwestward tangent. They'll cut through the wizards before they can retreat. Go. Go." Her hand thumped the table, but Merse was already passing it to the premier.
It was calculated sacrifice. Some of those infantry soldiers were going to die—and die as bait. But they would serve the greater cause.
It was a pure and painfully profound fact.
Praulth blinked and lifted her head. She quickly and unabashedly swiped a hand across her eyes, blinked more until the tears were gone. She caught a glimpse of the diplomats still watching raptly from the auditorium's
aisles. They were silent, perhaps finally and truly aware that they were witnessing a moment of genuine history.
She noticed Xink, too, still standing to the side, still attending her. Ready to perform any task she set him to do. He was faithful. She saw that he had retrieved Merse's medallion from where it had fallen. She would need Xink, later, when all this was done. No matter what the outcome, she realized, she would survive this night and the following day. She was intimately involved in this war, but she wasn't bodily at risk. She had already faced her physical hardships, being assaulted and ravaged on Petgrad's streets. She had survived that.
When this momentous battle was through, Praulth would have Xink; and she would take her comfort there, and he would welcome her, because he still loved her... with a greater depth of authentic feeling than she perhaps deserved. But she would deserve it. Eventually, at least. She would right the wrongs between them, and their mutually inflicted wounds would heal.
Still gazing at him, she smiled, a small sweet curl of her lips. Xink smiled back.
Merse told her the infantry unit was drawing out the wizards. The Alliance soldiers were sustaining casualties, being picked off one by one, erupting into awful gouts of murderous flame.
"The cavalry," Praulth said. "Now."
It happened for her on those maps, with every fresh bit of field intelligence that arrived and with every tactic she ordered. But the human cost was never far from her mind. Later, in the deep night, when the extraordinary and inexplicable event occurred, Praulth judged—gravely and sorrowfully—that the cost had been worth paying.
AQUINT (5)
He had dried flecks of blood in his hair and kept combing his fingers through it, trying to get it out. Abraxis wasn't the first person he'd seen killed, but it certainly was one of the most violent and sensational deaths he had ever witnessed, though Tyber's had been gruesomely spectacular, too.
Radstac definitely knew how to handle that sword of hers.
She and Aquint had fled the marketplace together. They had gone sprinting through streets and alleys, along a preplanned route to shake off any pursuers. Though Aquint had heard the alarm being raised behind them, no Felk soldiers had followed.
Now they had met up at some rooms that were behind a row of smithies and woodworking shops.
Aquint looked around. He saw the Minstrel and the woman who had been with him at that burnt-out granary. A few of the others he recognized as belonging to the Broken Circle were here, plus one new face. It was thin, and wore grey stubble. Also present was Deo, of course.
"Tell me something," Aquint said, addressing the Minstrel. "Why did you move your operation here from that warehouse where you were?"
The Minstrel said nothing. Someone else spoke up, "How do you know about that?"
"It used to be my warehouse," Aquint said. "In another life. Isn't that ironic?"
"No one's in the mood for humor," a large elderly man said. Aquint vaguely remembered his name was Ondak. "We've lost a good man today."
That would be Tyber, of course, the one who'd gotten himself turned into a torch by Abraxis before Radstac took the wizard's head off. Aquint had known the old thief from bygone days.
"Funny," Aquint said. "I lost one yesterday."
Though his tone was nonchalant and sarcastic, the truth of what Aquint said still stung. He missed Cat terribly. He did have some cause to think the boy was still alive, but that meant trusting what these people had told him, that Cat's body wasn't there when they had gone back for it.
There was silence in the rooms. Then the Minstrel stepped forward.
"That's the bag?" he asked Radstac.
She had the small red bag under an arm. "Of course it is," she said curtly. Having decapitated a man a short while ago, she showed no obvious reaction.
"May I have it?" asked the Minstrel.
She tossed it toward him. But Aquint's hand flashed upward and caught it. He dangled it by its strap.
"There's something in here I need before you do whatever you think you're going to do," he said.
The Minstrel blinked. A murmur went through the others of the Broken Circle.
"What is it?" the Minstrel asked. It was a courtesy, since there were more than enough here to overpower Aquint and take the bag.
"When I was in the city of Sook," Aquint said, "I was assigned to the quartermaster. That's where Lord Abraxis came to recruit me. Never mind why he picked me. But when I accepted his offer to become an Internal Security agent, he did something curious."
They were waiting to hear. "What?" the Minstrel prompted him.
"Abraxis made a cut on my thumb," Aquint said, "and dabbed up the blood with a bit of cloth that he then put into... a bag."
"I thought it was just the wizards from that Academy place who had to give samples of their blood," Deo said. He had set down the crossbow with which he'd shot Abraxis in the back, before Radstac had finished him off.
Several heads turned toward the thin-faced one in the room Aquint didn't recognize, though he could now guess who he was. The man shrugged and said, "That is my understanding of it. Luckily, my own sample was disposed of after it was presumed I was dead. That is the standard procedure."
"It was Abraxis's measure," Aquint said. "His idea, to maintain discipline. Yes, all those magicians had to provide samples. But Abraxis told me that other, prominent figures throughout the empire were also included."
"And you are prominent?" Ondak asked scornfully.
"I was an Internal Security agent on a very important assignment."
"I like that you say 'was,' " the Minstrel said.
Aquint gave him a stony look. "What else would I say now?"
The Minstrel nodded. He considered, then said, gesturing, "This man here is named Nievze. He is late of the Academy for magic in Felk. He's a deserter. He is also a skilled practitioner of blood magic. The whole point of today's operation, which cost us the life of our cherished colleague Tyber, was to secure Abraxis's bag of samples so that Nievze here could... make use of them."
"I understand that," Aquint said sharply. It had been explained to him. "But before that happens, I need what's mine from this bag."
Silence came again. They might choose to simply ignore what he wanted. Aquint knew full well the enormous potential that this bag contained. Would these rebels pause in their plans to accommodate him—he, who had until very recently been hunting this same group, meaning to turn them over to the Felk?
Aquint wished he'd had the chance to say goodbye to Cat before everything had gone so wrong.
The Minstrel looked to Nievze. "Can you find his individual sample among all the others?"
"There'll be hundreds," Nievze said, aghast.
"Answer my question."
The wizard thought, finally scratched at his stubbly face, and said, "It can be done. But—"
"Do it," the Minstrel said, in a voice that brooked no defiance.
Aquint, still holding the bag by its strap, now handed it directly to the Minstrel. He, in turn, passed it to Nievze.
"I will need a fresh sample of his blood," the wizard grumbled. "Then I will have to match it to one of these in here. Oh, it'll be a bother."
He opened the bag, and Aquint caught a glimpse of the many, many bits of blood-blotted cloth jammed inside. Doubtlessly Abraxis had had some magical means to quickly and accurately identify each and every sample in there. But Abraxis was gone. It was up to this deserter magician from Felk.
Aquint submitted to the new sample. Nievze took it unhappily and went off into the next room for privacy while he worked. Aquint sat down to wait. The Minstrel wordlessly pulled a chair near and sat with him. The others quietly retreated.
* * *
They heard the criers.
"What watch is it?" Aquint asked, glancing up. He had sunk into a dull reverie, wondering mostly about Cat and remembering their good times with maudlin hindsight.
These rooms had only a few windows, and those were shuttered up tight. But lines o
f daylight still showed around the edges.
"It's an early curfew," the Minstrel said.
"That's not good," someone muttered ominously.
"What did you expect?" Aquint said tartly. "An important official from Felk, the number two man in this whole bleeding empire, was beheaded today just outside the Registry. Remember what happened after that one soldier was murdered?" He directed this poignantly at the Minstrel.
"I remember," the Minstrel said, without inflection.
"I'll bet you do. Well, let's all try to imagine how the garrison is going to respond to this." Aquint listened a moment to the criers outside calling for the clearing of the streets. "Governor Jesile has no doubt contacted Felk by now. It's a safe guess that Matokin is none too happy."
"It'll be worse than last time?" a youngish girl said, looking like she didn't quite grasp the whole situation.
Aquint gave her an offhand glance. The Minstrel had killed that garrison soldier, and for a while after that incident Callah had been subjected to the full brutality of the garrison. The Felk soldiers had entered homes randomly, assaulted citizens, seeking the murderer of one of their own, and doing a good deal of damage in the process.
"That's another safe guess," Aquint finally said to the girl. She looked uneasy.
"Don't worry, Gelshiri," the Minstrel said reassuringly.
The other members of the Circle had come back into this room, apparently rallying around their leader.
"But we should be worrying, shouldn't we?" Ondak said. "There will be a citywide search—for you and you." He pointed to Aquint and Radstac, respectively.
Radstac stood with her arms folded, no emotion on that scarred face. Aquint knew enough to realize she was the most dangerous one here. He wondered if the rest of these people knew it.
"The Felk will tear this city apart!" Ondak continued, voice rising.
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