by M. C. Planck
“Wife,” Gregor said, “do what you can. The ones who cannot walk can ride on the gun carriages.” He turned away, gruff and hard, and began bawling orders at the troops.
“Let us handle this,” Lalania said to Christopher. “They may not fear a woman’s voice as much as yours.”
“Do they need healing?” Christopher asked. “I only have one spell left.”
“I doubt it,” Disa answered. “They were not in battle. Whatever ills they suffer can probably wait until tomorrow. What they need is food and tenderness.”
“And cleaning,” Lalania muttered. But she had her lyre out again, and began a gentle, soothing melody.
Christopher turned away, relieved to be relieved of this burden. The Saint had magic to fix a man’s mind, like the spell that fixed Torme and Cannan. Perhaps he would be able to fix these debased creatures. Perhaps they might, someday, have some kind of life.
“Karl,” he said, “show me the cooking pots.”
“I do not think that is wise.” Karl wore his hard face, the one he used when he had to tell Christopher no. “You have seen darkness enough for one day.”
“What?” Christopher said. “You told me that our cavalryman would have been eaten. I’m guessing they were sloppy about it.” The entire camp was a testament to sloth. “All I need is a finger bone.”
“And if you find other bones?” Karl asked. “Will you beggar yourself in random acts of kindness, reviving the remnants of slaves?”
Every attempt at a revival cost tael. Even the ones that failed.
“The slaves won’t come back,” Christopher said. “I know that. It’s not even worth trying.” Who would return to the horrifying world they had left? “I won’t get the wrong bone, Karl. I’ve got a spell in mind for that.” If he could find a ring he had seen once in a swamp, surely he could find a fragment of a man who had served under him.
Karl acquiesced in the face of magic. He led Christopher to a fire pit that seemed more garbage disposal than food preparation, and set soldiers to raking out the coals and exposing them to die in the warm, wet air. Then he left to supervise the taking of heads.
Christopher’s spell worked, guiding his hand into a pile of ash to clasp a white shard. He could not recognize what bone it had come from, before it had been gnawed and splintered, not that it mattered. But his hand disturbed something else, something small and round and cracked. Something he could not fail to identify.
A small, broken, human skull, hardly bigger than a clenched fist.
He stood and turned away. The jungle hung in emerald strips under a cerulean sky, but the colors had no meaning to him. Everything was bleached in coarse shades of gray.
They left the camp unburned.
“Karl is right,” he said. “They will return. And so will we.”
Two days later Christopher thundered through the scraggly brush at the head of his cavalry. They were following Gregor’s plan this time.
“The risk is necessary,” Gregor had argued the night before. “They are still wounded, demoralized, and disorganized. We must strike while the iron is hot.”
Every man they could put on a horse would swing north of the camp, accompanying Christopher and his entourage. They would descend onto the camp from the northwest, guided by Cannan’s woodcraft.
Half the infantry would flank the camp from the south, led by D’Kan’s unerring sense of direction. The other half would retrace their steps from the attack before, striking the camp from the east side under Torme. For speed they would take only their rifles, leaving the cannons and wagons in the fort. Only a single platoon would remain behind, guarding the supplies and liberated slaves.
If the shaman attacked now, he would destroy Christopher’s army piece by piece. It was a gamble Gregor was willing to take. This assault would trap the ulvenmen in a net of gunfire from which there would be no retreat. The cavalry charge, fronted by the ranked men and bolstered by magic, would shatter any resistance. The infantry would pick off ulvenmen one by one.
When Christopher questioned the wisdom of leading with their best, that was to say, with himself, Cannan shrugged off the danger. “We killed their rank,” he said. “They have nothing left to stand against us. They are dangerous now only to your common men.”
The horses’ hooves could be heard from a hundred yards away. When they pounded into the ulvenman’s camp, the ulvenmen were waiting for them. They came running in a howling charge, and Christopher howled back at them.
Flanked by Cannan on one side, Gregor on the other, and Disa behind, the diamond-shaped knot of horses plowed into the line of ulvenmen and cut through it as if it were water. Christopher felt the blows on his chain mail like hailstones on a raincoat, but tael bound his flesh. He bled only steel links as he charged through the camp.
The cavalry did not follow them. Karl and his horsemen pulled up abruptly, discharging their carbines at the ulvenmen, and then retreated. The surviving ulvenmen barked in victory and chased after them, only to face a fresh rank of horsemen firing madly. As the charge stalled, the first group finished reloading, and rode back to the fore. Under this circle of continuous fire the ulvenmen broke and fled for the tree line, only to die from the infantry’s rifle fire.
After forcing their way to the other side of the camp, Christopher’s group paused while Disa healed them and their mounts. Royal’s strength and weight deserved more credit for carving through the camp than his sword did. They turned back into the battle.
Christopher and his little group wheeled around the camp like a scythe blade, destroying everything in their path. Ulvenmen of all sizes and shapes fell under a storm of swords powered by magic, protected by magic. He spent so much preparing for battle that he hardly had any healing spells left. This was part of the plan.
“The faster we kill them, the less damage they can do,” Gregor had assured him.
Now he and the two other swordsmen committed slaughter. Ulvenmen, unprepared and unarmed, tried to bite him, or snatched up weapons from the dead. There were smaller creatures that fought only with fangs and claws. At first Christopher thought they were dogs, until one leapt in the saddle and tried to bite his face off. He smashed it with his pommel, knocking it to the ground where it disappeared under Royal’s flashing hooves. The goblins had little servants that they used for war, too, strange, deformed copies of themselves. Apparently it was a common stratagem.
When the ulvenmen drew bows, Christopher and his knights charged them and rode over them. When they drew axes and made a battle line, the guns cut them down. In a dozen minutes it was over. Nothing moved in the camp but humans, dispatching the wounded, cutting off heads, and smashing open huts. There were no casualties on their side. Gregor, Cannan, and Christopher had taken a dozen blows, rending their chain mail into tatters, but tael had bound their flesh. Christopher had been so angry, so eager to destroy these monsters that he did not even remember feeling the shock of being hit.
For an act of genocide, it was remarkably painless.
Christopher gazed over the carnage, watching the slave hut burn.
“How many more slaves do they have?” he asked. “How many more camps, with how many more people kept like cattle?” Not even cattle; the animals in barns and fields back home were treated with more gentleness than the ulvenmen had displayed. Several of the slaves they had rescued were missing various body parts, with only the marks of fangs left in their place. No farmer tortured his animals for fun. Christopher’s peasants did not eat their livestock alive.
No one answered him. The men were busy. Only the women had nothing to do, and they were too gray and ill to speak.
The army formed up and marched out, leaving only smoke and ashes behind. They had thrown the headless bodies into the burning buildings. D’Kan had wanted to leave them for the alligators to feast on, but too many of Christopher’s men remembered clicking skeletons in the dark. They preferred to kill their foes only once.
“My lord, I have a message. The Saint says he wil
l meet you and your fallen at Fort Sump, three days hence,” Disa told him as they rode away.
That would save a lot of time and trouble. Christopher smiled in satisfaction. Apparently his stone fort was now considered part of the Kingdom, a place safe enough for the Saint to visit. Only after a moment did he wonder how Disa had known the Saint was coming.
“The Saint spoke to me,” she answered, “in my mind. A sending.”
“Why not just talk directly to me?” Christopher asked, trying not to feel left out.
“Plausible deniability,” Lalania explained. “When news of your latest outrage reaches court, he can honestly say he hasn’t spoken to you.”
“What outrage?” he asked, but Lalania shook her head.
“You commit outrages like a man commits adultery. There will always be another one to take the last one’s place.”
Christopher looked askance at her, surprised by her bitter tone. She held a boot against her saddle, frowning, scrubbing at it with a bit of cloth, trying to clean something off it. Blood.
He let it pass.
The cavalry rode with him on the long trek back to the edge of civilization. The draft horses followed in a herd, each one burdened by two or three dead bodies. Christopher and Karl were alone again, almost, like old times, if you ignored the grim horsemen that shielded them from every direction. The rest of the rank stayed in the swamp. Christopher was considered safe enough with the cavalry, as long as they kept moving.
“That cavalry tactic you did, Karl. It has a name.” His memory had been jiggled and jogged over the days, and the word had come back to him. “A caracole. When the cavalry fires and withdraws to reload.” If he recalled correctly, the otherwise brilliant king of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, had considered the tactic useless and ordered his cavalry to stick to the traditional lance charge, softened up by a single round of fire. But the Swedish cavalry had lame wheel-lock pistols, not revolving carbines. Also, the Swedish cavalry didn’t fight giant man-eating dog-men.
“You should not call them cavalry,” Karl said. “It will only confuse people, who will expect nobles with lances and plate mail.”
“Carabineers, then.” That couldn’t confuse anyone, since from their perspective it was a made-up word.
“Good enough,” Karl said. “Now that I have a word for it, it will be easier to hire more. You should have a hundred of them.”
Christopher glanced over at Karl, questioningly.
“Between the chain mail and the carbine, they are the equal of a first-rank knight,” Karl explained. “A man with a hundred knights at his back need not fear anything.”
Except bankruptcy. Feeding that many horses was a challenge, let alone feeding the men. And their guns. The carbines ate powder like a man drank beer.
A stray fact came to Christopher. Lalania had said once that the King had a hundred knights. Christopher glanced at Karl again, but this time there was no explanation forthcoming.
The men of the previous fort had been very happy to see them, and very disappointed that they had stayed only a few minutes. Christopher looted their stores of barley and promised them a rotation soon. Whether they were nervous about sitting alone in the swamp or bored because they were missing all the action was impossible to tell. Maybe it was both.
Fort Sump was different. With stone walls, massive supplies, and a visiting Saint, it felt like civilization. Captain Steuben was there, along with a quartet of knights, the Saint’s formal escort.
The Captain of the Wizard’s Guard was also present. He appeared uncertain at first, but as he watched Christopher handing the Saint a ball of purple, he seemed to reach a decision.
“It is true, then, that you have won another great victory over the ulvenmen?” he asked Christopher.
“I suppose you could call it that,” Christopher said.
“The Lord Wizard told me such. He also instructed me to discover the secret that allows common men to slaughter ulvenmen like dogs.”
It wasn’t that much of a secret. “Remember those rumors you heard? Well, they’re true.”
The Captain grimaced. “I deserved that, Lord Vicar. But my master has instructed me to swallow my tongue and apply to you for succor. He desires that I arm my men as yours are armed.”
“You want to buy guns?” Christopher said, surprised.
“The Lord Wizard wishes to buy guns,” the Captain corrected him. “I beg you recall your relationship with his lordship when you set the price, and forgive the clumsiness of his servant.”
Christopher had wanted to sell to the lords, but he wasn’t sure this was the one he wanted to start with. On the other hand it figured that the wizard would be an early adopter of technology. He had less to lose from the diminishment of the power of the sword.
And Christopher had promised him a chance to be on his side.
“Sure. I’ll write you a letter to my shop master.” The letter would say rifles only, at a hefty profit. No grenades, carbines, or cannons. Not yet. And he’d set a price for gunpowder that was high enough to discourage stockpiling. If push came to shove, Christopher could cut off the supply of ammunition and shut down the wizard’s army in a matter of weeks.
The Captain seemed surprised at his easy victory. Perhaps he had expected Christopher to gloat over their reversal of roles. Or, more likely, expected to be robbed like he had robbed Christopher.
“Don’t worry, Captain,” Christopher said. “I’ll be making a fortune off you.”
“Off my Lord Wizard, you mean.”
“Not really,” Christopher said. “The guns are going to be expensive. You know your boss won’t want to hear the details, so you’re going to have to loosen up on the cut you take to pay for them all. I predict a tight purse for you for a while.”
“Thank you for the advice, Lord Vicar.” The Captain didn’t sound very thankful.
“Look at the bright side,” Christopher said. “When the ulvenmen attack again, you’ll look like a genius for having bought guns.”
“When?” the Saint asked. “Not if, but when?” He had listened so far without comment, but interrupted on this choice of word.
“Probably,” Christopher said. “The supply of ulvenmen seems inexhaustible.”
“We can kill many,” Karl added. “But not all. Some will escape into the swamp, and in a generation or two they will return.”
Christopher was uncomfortably reminded of his conversation with Friea. From the point of view of the ulvenmen, this must seem like a black harvest of its own.
The Saint was inspecting Christopher closely. “A thankless task, one that might drive any man to despair.”
“No,” Christopher said. “Not me. I have a wagonload of despair coming for you.”
“If you can wait two more days, my lord Krellyan. They could not travel so fast.” Karl took over explaining for him. “We rescued victims of the ulvenmen. The Colonel wants you to heal them, at his expense, as much as you are able. He has unlimited faith in your powers.”
“And you do not?” the Saint asked Karl, with gentle irony.
“You have not seen them,” Karl said flatly. “Even Torme blanched. Nothing this broken lives in our realm and calls itself human.”
Christopher wasn’t so sure Karl was right. Karl had never seen into the dungeons of the Gold Apostle. He imagined what kind of misery might live there, and seethed. But he could not reach the Apostle. Not yet.
The ulvenmen, on the other hand, had no one to protect them but themselves. And no one to blame, either.
They didn’t leave Fort Sump right away. Christopher woke up the next morning to a dull, sporadic drumming. At first he thought it was the return of the ulvenmen, and he leapt out of bed faster than his feet and wound up on the floor.
He calmed down once he noticed the absence of gunfire. Threading his way through the fort, he found Cannan in front of a makeshift forge hammering away at a metal coat. Gregor was watching him dubiously.
Cannan lifted the coat to inspect it, and Chr
istopher saw that it was made of overlapping scales mounted on a leather backing.
“Where did you get that from?” he asked.
“The last dinosaur rider,” Gregor answered. “Ser Cannan wishes to dress like an ulvenman.”
“Better than we,” Cannan muttered, fiddling with the scales.
Christopher could see his point. After the last battle their chain mail had been reduced to rags. The scales looked somewhat hardier.
“Here, let me,” he said, when Cannan returned the coat to his makeshift anvil, intent on welding a cracked scale. Reaching down to mend it with a spell, Christopher noticed with surprise that the scale was elaborately engraved. It seemed remarkable workmanship for the primitive conditions they had seen.
“This is fine work,” he said. “Surely we can figure out who made it.” The patterns would be like a signature, revealing which smith had labored so long over such an unusual item.
“It’s no work of the north,” Gregor said. “Not that any smith I know would even make such an odd design.”
“The Rangers would,” Cannan said. “They lack the forge-craft to make plate, and the coin to buy it.”
When both Christopher and Gregor stared at him in concern, Cannan shrugged.
“Ask the boy.”
Christopher called out, summoning his senior staff. One after another, Torme, D’Kan, and Karl examined the armor and declared it foreign to their respective areas, south, east, and west.
“That leaves nowhere,” Christopher said.
“Nowhere but the center,” Lalania announced. She stood outside the circle of men in a carefully idle pose, subtly castigating them for failing to have called on her expertise. “There are many smiths in Kingsrock. If you want to know where to buy fashion, you need but ask.”
“What smith would hammer out a death sentence under the shadow of the King’s own window?” Gregor asked. He held the coat in his arms, examining it from different angles.
“Perhaps he did not know for whom he toiled. The contract could have been placed through an intermediary—the same one who sold the ulvenmen human slaves.”
