The Lion Returns

by John Dalmas

  «He's not,» Vulkan agreed. «He sees things from his own viewpoint. And there was wisdom in those words that annoyed you.» He paused reflectively. «But he does not appreciate what Yuulith would be like, ruled by the Voitusotar. I am not sure that you and I do, fully.»

  PART FOUR

  War: Bloody Beginnings

  Among the Voitusotar, succession to the throne is not subject to dispute. A crown prince is selected by what they term the "Soul of the Voitusotar," most often from the family of the existing Crystal Lord.

  The nature of the Soul of the Voitusotar is not clear. It appears to be an aspect of the voitik hive mind, acting upon the total knowledge of the species, but having its own volition....

  * * *

  Talent in sorcery is not held by the Voitusotar to be the supreme virtue. It shares that honor with intelligence. Knowledge, on the other hand, is taken for granted. The hive mind is the receptacle of everything known to them, and what one knows is available to all. But understanding presents problems, as does accessing specific knowledge only vaguely identified by the seeker. And while the content of that vast repository includes decisions, it does not hold wisdom....

  From: The Voitusotar

  by Admiral Rister Vellinghuus

  (translated from the Hithmearcisc

  by Magister Dohns Macurdy).

  23 The Language Instructor

  Of the three ships sent exploring westward, fifteen years earlier, only one returned to Hithmearc. That voyage had predated voitik knowledge of sextants, and navigation had been by the sun, the pole star, and dead reckoning. But after sixty-one days and nights at sea, with winds from various quarters, and having twice been driven far off course by storms, dead reckoning had left a lot of slack.

  The surviving ship had been the smallest of the three, and the one given the most northerly course. The first land she'd raised had been a high rocky coast, dark with coniferous forest, and showing no sign of habitation. She'd replenished her water supply but not her food, then explored southward. After a week, a fishing boat was sighted, then more of them, along with villages, small towns, and several cargo ships of modest size, schooner-rigged for coastal travel. Her own square sails made the Hithik vessel conspicuous, and her human skipper nervous.

  Meanwhile his food supply continued to shrink, and he'd already learned that Vismearc was inhabited and civilized. All he really needed besides that were captives to take home with him, from whom Vismearcisc could be learned.

  Thus he anchored one night and sent out an armed party, which captured two youths just back from tending lobster traps. With this modest but important booty, the Hithik skipper set sail for home.

  Before he got there, he became involved with autumn storms, and reached home late and hungry, his vessel severely battered. One of his captives had died of a bleeding flux.

  The captain had early assigned his eleven-year-old cabin boy to be the captives' tutor, and the boy showed a talent for language. By the time they'd reached Hithmearc, both tutor and captive had made major progress in speaking and understanding the other's language. And in the process, the cabin boy learned that the ylver had indeed arrived in Vismearc, and prospered. The Ylvin Coast began a day south of the captive's village.

  At the voitik crown prince's order, the cabin boy remained the captive's companion. A year later, the captive died of a plague. The cabin boy then became the crown prince's personal language instructor, and indirect resource for the hive mind.

  24 An Ill Wind

  On the horizon, the admiral of the voitik armada could see a low coast that could only be Vismearc. But where in Vismearc? The Ylvin Coast? South of it? North of it?

  The armada had clocks; clocks had long been familiar in Hithmearc. It also had sextants, courtesy of the Occult Bureau of the Nazi SS, via the Bavarian Gate. So the admiral knew rather closely where on the globe they were. But as he pointed out to the crown prince, what he didn't know was where on the globe they needed to be.

  The crown prince was not, of course, surprised, but the admiral felt uncomfortable with it. He was, after all, merely human, as were all the armada's officers and crew, and one preferred not to disappoint one's voitik masters.

  Minutes later, the lookout reported a small sailboat to windward, and the crown prince ordered a captive taken. The admiral had signal flags run up, and for miles astern, the vast fleet hove to. A courier schooner was sent in to pick up the boat's occupant. From him, the crown prince learned that the ylver land was "off north some'rs"—far enough, he knew no more about it. Off north was adequate.

  The armada had experienced no major storm, but constant strong westerlies had seriously slowed it. The crossing had taken sixty-four days, and supplies of drinking water were seriously depleted. So instead of turning north at once, the crown prince decided to land and refill the water casks. Meanwhile the troops could go ashore. The voitar were desperate to stand on stable ground, and stop taking the antiseasickness potion provided by voitik herbalists. Prolonged use had caused chronic bowel disorders.

  The flat, sandy Scrub Coast had no harbors to accommodate 304 ships. By Hithik standards it had no harbors at all. Its fishing boats and smugglers' sloops sheltered in the lee of offshore islands and sand spits. And in the tidewaters of streams, few of them large, though some could accommodate ships in their lower reaches.

  Thus the armada was scattered along some ten miles of coast. Ships carrying the wasted, ramshackle cavalry horses took turns at such wharves as could accommodate a bark. Others lay in crowded anchorages, many of them aground at low tide, for there were no deep water anchorages inshore. Many lay at anchor in the open sea. Lifeboats shuttled to the beaches and back, landing troops.

  The local population had fled into the sparse forest before the first anchor dropped. Only elders and the disabled remained, and they were questioned. There was, they insisted, no land route northward to the ylvin land—"the empire," they called it. A great swamp intervened.

  Cavalry patrols were sent out on the more serviceable saddle mounts, seeking fodder and grain for the horses, and women for the officers. They found the country sandy, and the forage coarse. Here and there were boggy areas, mostly small, with lusty mosquito populations. Scattered along the streams were hardscrabble farms, on silty or sandy bottomlands, growing corn, squash, melons and groundnuts. But not fodder. Few owned a horse, and their cows and pigs foraged for themselves, tended by boys and young girls in no better flesh than the livestock.

  The ships' crews were hard at work. Lifeboats made trip after trip up streams, carrying casks to be filled with dark and dubious water, then were rowed back to their ships. The crown prince was impatient, and soldiers were assigned to help with the rowing, which went on around the clock. The weather was hot and humid, and the oarsmen, and the men on the tackle raising the casks, sweated copiously. The breeze gave scant relief.

  The next morning dawned to stronger breezes, and high thin clouds that thickened through the day. The ships' officers began to look nervously over their shoulders. Orders were shouted to hurry the work, but after a brief response, the pace slowed again. Before supper, signal flags ordered all ships secured for a storm. Spare anchors were lowered.

  By dawn, a gale had the sea in its teeth. By midday the armada was gripped and shaken by a category three hurricane. The low offshore islands and sand spits reduced the seas but gave no protection against the wind itself. Anchors had not settled into the firm sand bottoms of the anchorages. Wind combined with the storm surge drove many onto the beach, or up shallow streams.

  Ashore, the troops had sheltered in any buildings available, and in tents. But before the winds ever peaked, few buildings still stood, almost none with a roof.

  When it was over, 112 ships had foundered or broken up. Most of the rest were aground, a few of them high and dry at low tide. Few had a standing mast, and most had deck or hull damage. Grim and bedraggled, Crown Prince Kurqôsz counseled with his staff and the admiral, and began to plan the recovery. Gan
gs were put to work salvaging what they could from broken ships—tools, cordage, spars, hatch covers, canvas, barrels of pitch and tar, unbreached water casks, anchors—anything useable. Ashore, troops were sent into the sparse, brushy woodlands to find where their tents had blown to, and salvage what they could of them.

  * * *

  Over subsequent days, the horses recovered slowly. There was little grain on the Scrub Coast, and the forage was poor. Searching for food and fodder was systematized and intensified.

  Two mounted reconnaissance patrols were sent to explore to the west. They found that the sandy plain, with its open scrub forest, extended sixty miles or so inland. Beyond that lay a band of hills and heavier forest which the patrols did not explore. Beyond the hills a mountain range could be seen, not particularly high, but rugged looking.

  Neither patrol had seen so much as a village.

  A cavalry platoon had been sent off northward, to check the claim that there was no land route to the ylvin empire. It was gone for nine days. Two days' ride northward, it had come to a vast uncrossable swamp of black water, with great flare-bottomed trees, and mosquitoes beyond belief. The patrol had turned westward then, looking for a way around it. It ended at a steep and forested ridge, difficult for men and worse for horses.

  And at any rate a river, the source of the swamp, was in the way. It flowed out of the mountains, paralleled by a good wagon road. There was a stone wharf at its outlet into the swamp, but no sign of recent activity. Brief exploration up the road found the valley quickly narrowing to a gorge, with rapids unsuited to boating.

  After getting the platoon's report, the crown prince brooded all one night. The hive mind provided no help. When morning came, he gave new orders.

  * * *

  Four weeks later—four weeks of beautiful weather—repair crews had 147 ships serviceable. Patched, jury-rigged, with stubby masts of local pine, but serviceable. They were adequate to transport seventeen regiments of infantry and five of cavalry—more than half the army—northward up the coast to attack the ylvin empire. They'd be badly crowded, but the voyage was expected to take a few days at most. Over a period of several days, the ragged fleet assembled at sea off the mouth of the river that drained the great swamp.

  Then it set off northward, pushed by light southwesterly winds, and carrying with it far less than half the available food: it would conquer or starve. Crown Prince Kurqôsz felt no misgivings. In his mind, to attack was to conquer.

  The fleet left not because the crown prince was impatient, though he was, but because the rations wouldn't last till enough ships were ready to take the entire army.

  Kurqôsz had left his younger brother, Prince Chithqôsz, on the Scrub Coast with seventeen regiments—fifteen of infantry and two of cavalry—and one circle of sorcerers. Kurqôsz, his twenty-two regiments and two circles of sorcerers, would find a major port town, capture the district or region there, and send back ships to get the regiments left behind.

  Meanwhile ship repair would continue on the Scrub Coast. And the troops left there would continue to forage, to supplement their shrinking food supply.

  * * *

  Unknown to the crown prince, on the same day he left (night, actually, for it was on the other side of the world), a large, seagirt mountain exploded. Cubic miles of rock were pulverized and blown high into the sky; the sound was audible two thousand miles away. Effects more significant than sound would be felt much farther.

  25 Attack on Balralligh

  No word of anything worrisome reached the East Ylvin Coast Guard for weeks after the armada landed. The hurricane had run up the coast, weakening a bit, but damaging harbors and vessels extensively. A week afterward, a refitted Coast Guard flotilla—a schooner and three sloops—had run south on a routine smuggler patrol. It kept the low coast in sight, but saw no craft at sea, not even a fishing boat. Which in itself might have inspired investigation, but didn't.

  Its pass back northward, two weeks later, was a bit closer inshore. This time, on the Scrub Coast, eight hulks were spotted on offshore islands, dismasted and no doubt derelict. The commodore entered them on his log, but did not investigate.

  Three days later, the log was turned in at the Coast Guard office in Balralligh, and interest was finally sparked. Two seers had recently reported dreams of a voitik fleet, but no one had informed the Coast Guard. It learned of it quite incidentally, well after the patrol flotilla had sailed off southward, and then didn't take it seriously.

  Now the admiral sent a message to Emperor Morguil. Who had just received a dispatch describing Gavriel's and Cyncaidh's concern, after their meeting with Macurdy and the great boar.

  All military leaves were canceled. Level One mobilization orders were issued, carried by the best postal service in Yuulith. Command staffs down to cohort level were ordered to report. All other officers and men were to make themselves ready and available should further mobilization become necessary. And the rams were to be refitted and recrewed as quickly as possible.

  Meanwhile, a light flotilla—four fast sloops—was sent to investigate the hulks. In the face of southerly winds, they sailed southward till they spotted the first armada ships close offshore. Ugly with their stubby replacement masts, about forty of them rode the hook in the assembly area, awaiting the others. The Coast Guard sloops made about and headed for home.

  Within an hour of their arrival, the great bell at Balralligh Fortress banged its alarm across the city, continuing for ten head-rattling minutes. Couriers galloped out, headed for every other city in the eastern empire, particularly Colroi, the imperial capital. And as dusk thickened into night, a great beacon, newly piled on Balralligh Hill, was fired. It could be seen for thirty miles. Within sight of it were other beacons waiting for the torch, and within their range, still others.

  The ylvin admiral was sticking his neck way out. There'd been no identification of the ships seen, and no consultation with the imperial palace. But forty strange ships? If they weren't voitik, then they were some other potent threat. And in his talented bones, he felt those ships were what his people had first feared, then largely forgotten about over the generations.

  From his palace in Colroi, Emperor Morguil ordered full mobilization.

  * * *

  The Balralligh Legion was more human than ylvin—four cohorts of ylvin cavalry and six of human infantry. For even with long-youth mixed bloods registered as ylver by the census, humans outnumbered ylver in the eastern empire.

  The legions officers and men were all from the Balralligh and Lower Ralligh River Districts, and within three days they were almost fully mobilized. They were decently trained, though inevitably they lost some of their edge and physical conditioning between the annual exercises. But given the nature of the alarm, all were in a state of repressed excitement. If it came to a fight, they felt ready.

  The Coast Guard had sent picket sloops south to watch, and on the fourth day the armada was seen approaching as briskly as it could, given its jury-rigged masts. As it approached, the pickets turned home one by one. Balralligh's great alarm bell banged again, this time at intervals all day. And again couriers galloped off with brief but fearsome reports and orders. The newly rebuilt Balralligh beacon was doused with oil in preparation for nightfall.

  * * *

  General Kethin, Lord Felstroin, stood atop the wall of Balralligh Fortress. It no longer provided the security it had fifteen centuries earlier, when it had still enclosed all there was of the mile-square town. Since then, Balralligh had greatly outgrown its enclosure, spreading over an unwalled area eight times as large.

  Still the fortress, and the mangonels atop its walls, commanded the harbor and its wharves. And fifteen years earlier, during the "pirate" scare, a lesser fortress had been built on the promontory commanding the harbor entrance. Now, to intercept the invaders, the imperial battle fleet had put to sea—twenty rams, biremes with rows of muscular human oarsmen, and cargos of ylvin marines.

  Landsman though he was, General Keth
in knew the basics of naval warfare, and had seen the picket reports. None of the enemy ships appeared to be rams. Troopships then. But surely the Voitusotar wouldn't send ships that couldn't be defended. They might, he supposed, land men down the coast a day's march or so, at effectively unfortified harbors: two ships at one, three at another, four somewhere else. Even here at Balralligh, not more than twenty could dock at once, though many more could lay at anchor to await their turn.

  He wished he could see better. The moon was well into the third quarter, and had not yet risen. And though he had a fair degree of ylvin night vision...

  From the promontory above the harbor entrance, he saw a streak of fire arc across the water, then others in quick succession, fireballs cast by the mangonels positioned there. Before the first hit the water and was extinguished, nearly a dozen were in the air. Two struck ships, and within a minute, flames could be seen spreading through their freshly-tarred rigging. Cheers arose from the fortress wall. But neither ship took fire generally. General Kethin imagined teams aboard them manning pumps and hoses, attacking any burning material that fell to the deck.