When the two domes collided, the impact shook Tol hard, though he was out of the driver’s seat in a flash, sword drawn. His diminished band followed him as he leaped, still barefoot, onto the other turtle. He snagged the rail of the enemy hoarding and swung a leg over it. Only a handful of Tarsans remained on the platform, and when the blood-spattered gang of Ergothians stormed aboard, the archers threw down their bows and begged for their lives.
Three of the four turtles had been captured. The last, the southernmost, experienced a mutiny when the Silvanesti driver proved unwilling to continue the charge alone against the Ergothian tents. Instead, he wheeled his beast away from the fighting and toward the seashore. The archers he carried, unable to control the beast themselves, had no choice but to abandon their perch. The last anyone saw of the fourth turtle and his driver, they were paddling far out to sea.
Their final thrust defeated, the Tarsan mercenaries grounded their arms and surrendered. Admiral Anovenax had managed to escape capture with a small retinue of loyal retainers, and they re-entered the city. But the surviving members of his army of thirty thousand were captured.
Back on the ground, boots and leggings restored, Tol reorganized his scattered forces. Casualties had been heavy. He himself had received a few minor wounds. Loyal Frez had not even a scratch, but word came that Darpo had been gravely injured. Tol found him lying on his back on the ground, shielded from the glare of the setting sun by a wall of fellow soldiers.
Felryn Felryn’s son, cleric, healer and a friend of Tol since his arrival in Juramona, was working on the wounded man. Sleeves rolled back to free his lean brown arms, Felryn probed Darpo’s side gently for the head of the arrow. Darpo’s brown eyes were open, his face moist with sweat. The scar that ran from his left eyebrow to his left ear stood out sharply white against his waxy pallor. His gaze flickered briefly to Tol, but he had no strength to acknowledge his commander.
There was no better healer in the empire than Felryn, not even in the imperial household. Time had thinned his curly hair and streaked its black with white, but the skill had not left his long, powerful fingers. He located the arrowhead and deftly removed it. Darpo gasped. Felryn spoke to him soothingly, applying a clotting powder to the wound. An assistant raised the injured man’s head so he could sip a soporific from a silver cup. Darpo’s eyes closed.
“Will he live?” asked Tol softly.
“I think so, but that is in Mishas’s hands,” Felryn said. “I dress their wounds. It is the goddess who heals them.”
Horns blared, the sound followed by the rumble of hooves. The foot soldiers parted ranks as a contingent of horsemen thundered in. Leading them was a white-bearded warrior with a black leather patch over his right eye. Lord Regobart had lost one eye in a duel when he was a young man.
“My lord!” he hailed Tol. “The day is ours!”
Tol approached the general’s horse, replying more temperately, “The battle is won, anyway.”
Behind Regobart were arrayed some of the highest warlords in the empire. Although their names were a roll call of imperial glory, Tol’s many victories made him their equal. Even so, most of them looked upon him as an upstart, a clever peasant whose martial success smacked of unnatural influences or illicit magic.
Regobart would not allow Tol’s caution to tarnish what he saw as the glory of this day. “The war is won,” he insisted. “I have summoned the city to surrender, and the princes and syndics have signaled their willingness to parley.”
Tol frowned. It was true they had vanquished the last sizable fighting force in Tarsis, but the city’s defenses were still intact, and the Ergothian armies were not equipped to conduct a long siege. In spite of the efforts of the imperial priests, the Tarsan fleet remained in place, a potent threat. If they escaped the bay, they could wreak immense havoc along the empire’s lengthy coastline.
None of these thoughts troubled the warlords arrayed before Tol. Triumph was evident on every face.
“When is this parley to take place?” Tol asked.
“Tonight, four hours past sundown. A pavilion will be erected by the Tradewind Gate.” This was the same gate through which the Tarsans had sortied that day.
The wounded and dead were removed to camp, and thousands of dejected Tarsan prisoners were marched away under guard. Tol paraded them within bowshot of the walls, to make sure the city-dwellers could see their defeated army. The sun, sinking into the bay, bloodied the white stone walls and gilded the hulls of the Tarsan fleet, still held by magical winds and hovering like birds of ill omen.
Tol hated diplomacy.
It was not that he opposed talk. In fact, he rather enjoyed it, and he thoroughly approved of any measure that lessened bloodshed. Unlike the typical imperial warlord, who regarded his warriors as expendable, Tol valued the life of every soldier under his command. Of humble birth himself, he did not ascribe to the notion, common among noble Ergothians of the Great Horde, that dying for the empire was the greatest honor a warrior could achieve. Tol preferred life to honor, as a rule.
Diplomacy, however, was something else again. It required him to wear his formal armor, a flimsy set of plate enameled in imperial crimson, to tame his unkempt hair and beard, and to try to look fierce and amenable at the same time. There would be interminable discussions of boring points of trade, land rights, tariffs, and indemnities; veiled threats and counter-threats would be made, the same ground would be covered and re-covered until a sane man felt like screaming.
In Tol’s tent, Kiya and Miya helped lace him into his fancy general’s armor. The sisters had been with him fifteen years. Ostensibly wives and hostages given by their father, Chief Makaralonga of the Dom-shu tribe, whom Tol had captured in battle, in reality the women were more like big sisters (each was a head taller than he) than hostages. Wives they were not, either. Tol’s heart lay elsewhere.
Tol studied his reflection in a dull brass mirror. Just past thirty, broad-shouldered and stocky, with a square face and long brown hair, he had grown to look very like his father. Even the short beard he sported, in place of the sweeping mustache favored by the empire’s elite, was very like Bakal’s. He suddenly realized he was now about the age Bakal had been when Tol had left the family farm to begin his training as a warrior in Juramona. Where was his father now?
The crimson armor, jeweled dagger, and velvet mantle Tol wore as a warlord and the General of the Army of the North couldn’t keep him from looking like who he was. In spite of twenty years’ service and the favor he enjoyed from the imperial regent, Crown Prince Amaltar, he still felt like an impostor hobnobbing with the high and mighty. The decade he’d spent campaigning in the wilds had only strengthened that feeling.
Kiya flipped her long horsetail of blonde hair over her shoulder and announced, “You look like a bushberry,” naming the bitter, inedible, and bright red fruit of a forest vine.
“A bushberry with whiskers,” Miya added. She had short golden-brown hair and a lighter build than her warrior sister. In charge of Tol’s household and domestic affairs, she had a skill as a haggler which made her the bane of merchants across the empire.
Tol divided a sour look equally between them. “Exactly what I needed to hear before facing the nobility of Tarsis.”
Kiya made a dismissive sound. “You’re twice the warrior of any of those snobs.”
“And you’re the Crown Prince’s champion,” put in Miya. “When he becomes emperor, your star will know no bounds. Why should you be unhappy?”
A face flashed into Tol’s mind-green eyes and a smile framed by a rich fall of dark brown hair. Valaran. Ten years had passed since he’d last heard from his beloved, ten years of silence that puzzled him. Despite the passage of time, the distance between them, and the fact she was married to Crown Prince Amaltar, Tol still could not forget her. Val was lodged in his heart, a thorn that could never be removed.
The sisters knew of that old pain, but with the practicality of their forest upbringing, they saw no point in dwelling on
it.
“You’re right, I’ve no reason to be unhappy,” Tol replied firmly, replacing his frown with a smile. “Life is good.”
Kiya grasped him by the shoulders, staring hard into his eyes. “Let the Tarsans see the great Lord Tolandruth in all his glory. By the gods, I wager if you glare at them the right way, they’ll melt into their fancy boots!”
The jest had its intended effect, lightening his mood. Seating his ceremonial helmet on his head, Tol stepped outside.
Torches blazed at the entrance to his tent, and his honor guard snapped to attention when he emerged. All his old comrades were present, save the wounded Darpo: there was balding Frez, dark-skinned Tarthan, Fellen the engineer, and Sanksa, the Karad-shu tribesman.
Looking them over with a grin, he suddenly missed Egrin, Raemel’s son, the man who more than any other had made a warrior out of a clumsy peasant lad. Egrin had become Marshal of the Eastern Hundred when his predecessor, Lord Enkian Tumult, dared to criticize Prince Amaltar’s leadership during the worst part of the war against Tarsis. Removed as marshal, Enkian was made Warden of the Seascapes, the wild, desolate northwest coastal province. Not only a demotion, it was a dangerous assignment. Tarsan ships raided the Seascapes regularly. The previous two wardens had died leading their men against Tarsan raiding parties.
Wind lashed at the burning torches and drove sand against the soldiers’ armor. Tol pulled on a pair of studded gauntlets, the last detail of his formal outfit, and strode away flanked by his retinue. He didn’t like twenty armed men following his every move, but generals were expected to have entourages.
They marched through camp. At every junction soldiers turned out to cheer them. Even the camp followers joined in. By the time Tol reached the pavilion where the meeting was to take place, the whole Ergothian camp resounded with his name.
Lord Regobart was waiting outside the tent with his own large honor guard. He inclined his head politely to his young colleague.
“Welcome, my lord. I was able to track you by your stealthy approach,” Regobart said.
Tol removed his helmet, smiling at the old warlord’s jest, and they conferred in confidential tones. Regobart wanted to establish his primacy in the upcoming negotiations. He was twice Tol’s age, a warrior of long service to the empire, and the scion of one of the oldest and noblest families in Ergoth. His ancestor, also named Regobart, had fought at the side of Ackal Ergot, founder of the empire, yet he knew the younger man had the acclaim of the troops and the powerful backing of the prince regent.
“You speak for the emperor here, my lord,” Tol assured the elder general. “You understand these matters far better than I.”
Regobart looked relieved. “Shall we put our brand on these sheep?”
Tol did not believe the Tarsans would be so compliant. Nonetheless, he nodded agreement, and thus they entered the great tent.
Regobart had spared no effort to make the pavilion extravagant. The center room was easily twenty paces across. Thick carpets covered the sand, and light was provided by six brass candle-trees, each holding twenty fat tallow candles. A trestle table in the center of the room was laden with ewers of wine and beer. Along the rear wall a cold repast had been laid out on another table. The Tarsan delegation hovered there, murmuring among themselves and eyeing the guards posted around the room.
The entrance of the two enemy generals silenced the desultory talk. The Tarsans-eight men and four women-sorted themselves into a line. The central place was held by a tall noble, finely made and clad in a pale linen robe edged with gold. A gilded chaplet sat on his head.
“I am Valgold, Prince of Vergerone,” he said, pressing a beringed hand to his chest and bowing slightly. “I speak for Tarsis.”
“Regobart, Lord of Caergoth.” The elder general gestured to Tol. “And this is Lord Tolandruth of Juramona.”
Glancing down the row of enemy leaders, Tol spotted a face he recognized. It belonged to a woman of striking appearance, with black hair and prominent amber eyes. She was elegantly attired in a close-fitting gown of green velvet and stood with one hand on her hip, the other holding a heavy goblet. Her gaze moved from Regobart to Tol and back, with no sign of recognition.
Prince Valgold began to introduce his colleagues: first, Syndic Trylani, a portly, balding fellow; then Syndic Formigan, ebony-skinned; and Princess Shelei Gozandstan, a silver-haired matron dressed entirely in white. Four strands of lustrous gold chain encircled her neck and hung to her waist.
Regobart bowed. “Princess Shelei and I have met. Greetings, Your Highness.” Unsmiling, she acknowledged the general with a barely perceptible nod.
Syndic Pektro was the one with wine-stained fingers and crumbs in his brown beard. Prince Helx of Mokai was a clean-shaven young man with a cruel expression and a dagger poorly concealed beneath his purple robe. Syndic Tomo, a stout fellow clad in a leather-girded tunic, was the only Tarsan still eating.
Masters Vyka and Rorino, and Mistress Xalia Tol, were immediately recognizable as priests. Plainly dressed, all three wore incised amulets on chains around their necks and stood with hands clasped at their waists. Vyka was the elder of the men; Rorino, no more than twenty. Xalia, about Tol’s own age, wore the medallion of a priestess of Shinare.
The striking, raven-haired woman in green velvet was Syndic Hanira. Tol had glimpsed her first some fifteen years earlier, in Prince Amaltar’s tent before the campaign against the forest tribes of the Great Green. Later, she’d served as the Tarsan ambassador to the imperial court in Daltigoth. She’d made an audacious appearance before the regent in manly attire, an act calculated to unsettle the conservative warlords. It had worked. Tol certainly remembered Hanira.
The last Tarsan was a red-faced man whose hands and face bore many small cuts. This was Admiral Anovenax. Tol was surprised to meet his adversary face to face.
“My lord admiral,” he said. “I compliment you on the good fight today.”
“Not good enough,” said Anovenax bitterly. He had a deep, powerful voice. Bawling commands from the quarterdeck of his flagship, he must be quite impressive.
At Lord Regobart’s invitation, everyone took their places at the table. They presented an interesting tableau. On one side, the twelve richest and most powerful people of the city of Tarsis; on the other, only Tol and Regobart.
“Let me begin by saying we are here to bring about an end to the war between our states,” Regobart began. “I have a list of our requirements given to me by the prince regent.” He held out a sheet of parchment to Prince Valgold.
The prince quickly scanned the document, eyes darting down the short list. “This is unacceptable,” he said bluntly. “Agreement would mean the end of Tarsis.”
“If the war continues, there will be no Tarsis,” Regobart replied coldly.
“That remains to be seen!” Anovenax growled.
“Would you care to try conclusions with us-again?” asked Tol, bristling.
Regobart placed a hand on his comrade’s arm, and Prince Valgold called for calm. Valgold handed the list of demands to the man on his left, the portly, balding Trylani. He read it and passed it down. In moments, all the Tarsans had seen it.
Hanira spoke firmly. “Tarsis cannot live without the ships of its navy,” she said, gesturing with one hand. Her fingernails were long and painted a pale rose color. Tol had never seen such a fashion, not even in the imperial court.
Admiral Anovenax offered his vigorous agreement with this statement, but Lord Regobart interjected, “Your raids on our coast must end. Either you stop them, or we shall.” At that Anovenax took instant umbrage.
The arguments escalated, about fleets and trade and war indemnities to be paid to the empire in gold. At one point Prince Helx’s harsh expression drew into an even fiercer frown, and he asked sarcastically, “Why stop with gold? Why not enslave us all and be done with it?”
“I will gladly entertain alternatives,” Regobart answered, refusing to be baited. “Silver, copper, grain-”
“Hostages?”
The single word from Hanira silenced the room.
Tol and Regobart exchanged a glance. Tol asked, “What do you propose?”
“That a certain part of the indemnity be rescinded in favor of a number of volunteer hostages to be sent to Daltigoth in token of our peaceful intentions.”
“Noble hostages?” Tol asked. “You, lady?”
Valgold flushed, and Prince Helx looked furious, but Admiral Anovenax snorted with amusement. “As well try to put a panther on a leash!” he scoffed.
Most of the Tarsan men in the delegation laughed nervously and shifted in their chairs. Princess Shelei frowned in reproof. The three clerics lowered their eyes. Only Hanira herself seemed unperturbed.
“My countrymen jest with you,” she said evenly. “As head of the Golden House, I’ve had many sharp dealings with them.”
“Golden House?” asked Tol.
“The guild of goldsmiths and jewelers,” Prince Valgold explained, then quickly shifted the subject back to the more serious questions of trade.
The discussion lasted far into the night. Another meal was served by Ergothian orderlies. Wine flowed, but all kept their heads clear. At times tempers flared. Prince Helx, with arrogant rudeness, dismissed a compromise proposed by Lord Regobart.
Regobart smote the table with his fist, declaring he would turn Tarsis into a tidal pool if need be.
Helx jumped up, hand hovering over his dagger. “Do your worst, you savage! How will you breach our walls, eh? With sabers?”
The prince had a point, Tol reflected. Victorious as they were in the open field, the Ergothians still did not have the means to ravage and reduce the great city.
Tol had kept silent through most of the stalemate, watching and listening, and he felt he was beginning to understand what mattered to the Tarsan delegation. For all their talk of freedom and culture, what truly set their blood coursing was money.
Breaking the charged silence, he said calmly, “We don’t have to destroy your walls, Your Highness. We can occupy your country. If all supplies to the city were cut off, how long would your food hold out? How long would your gold supply last?”
The Wizard_s Fate e-2 Page 2
