Judgment at the Verdant Court

by M. C. Planck

  Despite her words, Lalania’s frown as she examined the armor told them her theory was untenable. She traced her hand over the leather backing, still smooth and supple.

  “Does this not seem remarkably cared for to you?” she asked Gregor. “Soft leather in this swamp?”

  Gregor’s face revealed surprise as his eyes followed her finger to the detail he had overlooked. Christopher, who knew to the copper piece how much he spent on castor oil to keep his men’s boots and saddles intact, was equally surprised.

  Gregor bawled out a call for his wife. Lalania gave him a sour look. “So quickly have you forgotten my talents,” she said, and Gregor went silent, his mouth trapped between apology and rebuke. Lalania ignored him and cast a spell.

  Then she leapt back in surprise, her eyes wide. Gregor dropped the coat and stepped back hastily. Cannan, of course, drew his sword.

  “What?” Christopher said, mostly because he understood almost nothing of what had just happened.

  “It is enchanted,” Lalania gasped.

  Now Christopher stepped back, concerned. But for once Cannan’s face almost betrayed a smile.

  “And to think I doubted myself,” the big knight said. “No wonder the beast-man stood so long against our swords.”

  “Indeed,” Gregor agreed. “That does explain much. Lala, what rank?”

  She concentrated, tracing patterns in the air with her finger. “All I can say for certain is that it is greater than first.”

  Having just destroyed an evil artifact, Christopher was deeply suspicious of stray magic items. The other men were not. They began to display acquisitive leers. D’Kan knelt to pick up the armor, frowning only at its weight.

  “Is that safe?” Christopher asked.

  “It did no harm to the ulvenman chieftain,” D’Kan said. “And there is no shame in making use of the arms of the enemy where we can.”

  Karl took the armor from D’Kan. “Nonetheless we will ask the Saint to inspect it first.”

  “While he does that,” Torme said, “how shall we share out the spoils?”

  “Simple enough,” Cannan replied. “Gregor and I will dice for it.”

  It made sense that one of the high-rank warriors would wear it, as they were always in the front line. Except, so was Christopher. He opened his mouth to object, but Torme was already speaking.

  “Perhaps it will not come to that,” Torme said. “Didn’t we slay a dozen of those dinosaur riders just a season ago?”

  “The scrap pile . . .” Christopher said, and everybody rushed outside.

  The armor and weapons from the defeated ulvenmen had been tossed into a mound at the foot of the hill. Theoretically they were supposed to be carried by the empty supply wagons back to his forges in Knockford for recycling, but the draymen preferred to rest their horses on the journey home. They only took a load of scrap when Christopher remembered to remind them. Now the nobles dug through the pile with alacrity, searching for anything not rusted or rotted to ruin. Since a thick layer of filth lay over everything in the pile, it was not obvious which was mundane material or magically enhanced. Lalania repeated her spell, but it only ran for a few minutes, and the pile was four feet tall. Cannan began winnowing the coats with a pitchfork; anything that didn’t come apart under the assault was carefully checked by Gregor and Torme.

  By the time they reached the bottom they had recovered two more scale coats. The pile had once stood at least eight feet; there was no telling how many pieces of enchanted armor had gone into the forge unnoticed, to suffer the same fate as the ring. Lalania’s theory of destroying magic items for immediate gain hardly seemed necessary anymore, given that he had been destroying them through simple ignorance, despite their unnatural hardiness.

  The armor was far too broad across the shoulders for a human frame, and hung to the ground on everyone but Cannan. Gregor and Cannan took the suits back to the anvil and commenced to make alterations, cutting down the armor in length and breadth, and repairing what damage had been caused by rifle or grapeshot. Disa used her magic to rejoin the edges of the armor to its new, smaller shape.

  Christopher went through the pile of discarded scales, mystified. He cast his own detection spell, so he could see the enchantment lying on the scales on the coat; as each scale dropped to the ground, its aura faded away. Yet when Gregor took a scale from the pile on the ground and used it to replace a broken scale still on the coat, the newly placed scale regained the aura. What, precisely, did the enchantment lie on, if it was not each individual part? He would have said the leather backing, but at one point Disa joined in a new panel, and the leather took on the same glow.

  When they brought it inside for his inspection, the Saint studied the armor somewhat longer than Lalania had.

  “It seems safe enough,” he finally said. “A simple third-rank enchantment, with no surprises that I can detect. But its mere existence is surprise enough; there are few in the Kingdom who can do such work. I am one, but you need not ask; I assure you this is no enchantment of mine.”

  “The Gold Apostle is another,” Lalania suggested.

  Krellyan frowned at her. “Even I cannot casually inquire as to whether or not an Apostle has been arming the King’s enemies.”

  Cannan shook his head. “You overthink this. Some adventurous party, from days of yore, wandered south, fell into a bog, and drowned. The ulvenman shaman, guided by magic, dug them up and handed out their gear to his loyal lieutenants. Indeed, the tael from their heads probably made him the chief shaman in the first place.”

  “Does that happen?” Christopher said. It seemed improbable to him.

  “All the time,” Gregor answered. “For that matter Baron Fairweather surely had a blade of rank on his person when he disappeared. Who knows what has become of it? Wandering out into the Wild to recover the treasure previous wanderers have lost is half an adventurer’s life.”

  Perhaps no more improbable than the fact that he had almost left the same treasure to rot in a scrap heap. In a hundred years the other metals would have wasted away, and some lucky sod would have stumbled over a fortune literally lying on the ground. How improbable would that seem?

  “More to the point,” Lalania said, “what else did the shaman uncover?”

  Christopher thought about the wand of fire he had taken from Flayn and given to Fae.

  Gregor shook his head. “It can’t be anything too dramatic,” he said. “Otherwise he would have already used it against us, back when we were kicking his ass the first time.”

  “You could break these like you did the ring,” Lalania suggested. “They will yield less tael than that powerful enchantment, but your pocketbook will not complain.”

  “Or we could wear it, and fashion be damned,” Cannan said, getting to the truth of her objection. “I do not fancy charging into an ulven camp wearing a nightshirt again.”

  “One for each us,” Gregor agreed. “A few pieces from Kingsrock to round out the missing bits, and—with the strength of that enchantment—it will serve us better than plate.”

  Christopher, at a loss, looked to Karl for guidance. The young man nodded subtly, indicating his approval. Lalania gave them both an annoyed look but held her tongue.

  “Okay, then,” Christopher said. “But somebody needs to show me how to put it on.”

  17

  A FORTIFYING MELODY

  The combined tactics of caracole and overwhelming firepower served out Christopher’s retribution on the inhuman slavers so effectively that the new armor was barely put to the test. The carabineers knew how to engage the ulvenmen with minimal losses now. Once they had located a camp, the infantry would push to envelope, cannons at the fore, rifles and carbines on the flanks. When they had exterminated all the camps within a day’s march of their fort, they marched deeper and built a new one.

  In two camps they freed more slaves. Three others were without, although D’Kan found evidence of human bones in them. The smallest camp had been to the west, so now they marc
hed east, trying to find the center of the ulvenman realm. They had pushed as far as they could during the last three days, and pitched a tight, cold camp on a spot of slightly drier-than-usual ground. The plan was to march four days before building a fort, instead of three. It meant an extra night in the wild, unfortified, but Christopher’s anxiety for the human slaves pushed him to reach farther, and his men agreed. Building a fort was two days they didn’t spend killing ulvenmen.

  There was an unusual amount of gunfire the night after their extended march, as sentries picked out spies or just movement in the bushes outside their perimeter. Perhaps they had surprised the ulvenmen by moving faster than usual. In the morning they broke camp, loading their supplies on wagons, saddling and hitching horses, and fell out in a long column, the carabineers ranging far ahead of the march under Gregor and D’Kan’s guide.

  In the middle of the day, when Christopher was thinking about lunch, he heard the muffled sounds of rifle fire far ahead. He hadn’t sent a scout in the air yet, so he called out for a volunteer. Charles rushed to shout out his name, forgetting that Kennet was with the carabineers and thus, for once, not the automatic winner of any volunteer request.

  Charles flew off, leaving the moving column behind in seconds, and returned in only seconds more.

  Christopher wondered if the boy had forgotten something. Then he saw his face.

  “Something’s coming!” Charles shouted, over and over again, almost blubbering. The gunfire in the distance increased. Men up and down the column noticed.

  “Report, soldier!” Christopher barked at Charles, trying to return him to sensibility.

  “They’re coming, Colonel. The ulvenmen are coming.”

  “How many?”

  “All of them. And they bring night with them.”

  A rifle fired from the head of the column, followed by another.

  “How long?” he asked Charles, and the boy trembled, seeking self-control.

  “Minutes? Half an hour, maybe.” The act of calculation seemed to calm him. “I saw a broad swath of movement, and something shrouded in darkness. Our horsemen flee before them. They will be here soon.”

  They would arrive exhausted and disordered, and possibly out of ammunition. And they would be followed by a horde. Already the edges of that flood were encountering Christopher’s army, as the occasional shot showed. His men, sensing trouble, began to look around nervously.

  He had to choose. Stand and fight, or retreat to the nearest fort. Neither option was tenable. The last fort was three and a half days behind them. Even if they abandoned their baggage, they could not travel faster than ulvenmen. And standing their ground without a wall would be suicidal if the entire ulven nation was truly on the march.

  Lalania dismounted, skipping forward, bowing to Christopher as she passed him. “Now, my Lord Vicar, you will not regret the price you paid for me,” she called out.

  “What the— Lala, get back on your horse,” he said to the woman, annoyed that she had chosen this moment to turn cryptic and strange. She ignored him, unsheathing her lyre as she ran forward.

  “Sir, what do we do?” Charles asked. But Christopher was watching Lalania.

  As the sound of her lyre floated over the jungle, white mist rose from the ground. Like he had seen in the chapel, the mist separated into figures vaguely man-shaped. This time there were many, many more. Lalania struck her notes forcefully, loudly, commanding them. They responded with a chant, low at first but gaining in volume as more and more figures appeared.

  Suddenly the figures streamed toward the column, streaking to the supply wagons. Horses and men began to panic, but Christopher shouted them down.

  “Hold your ground! Stand still and do not interfere!”

  The misty figures flowed into the wagons. When they came out they were carrying tools: axes, shovels, hammers, and saws.

  “Work!” sang Lalania.

  “Ho!” called back the misty figures, their hollow voices resigned and resilient, the echo of common working men. The axes fell against trees; shovels bit into ground.

  “Work!” sang Lalania, increasing the tempo.

  “Ho!” they called back, matching her pace. The tools moved faster and faster until they blurred, the sound of metal biting wood turning into the static buzz of a chainsaw. Sawdust and dirt floated up from the ground over a hundred yards. Trees began to fall, and Lalania disappeared in the cloud.

  “Work!”

  “Ho!”

  Her music continued unabated. Christopher forced his attention away from the spectacle.

  “Guard the perimeter!” He didn’t know if the ulvenmen could disrupt the process, whatever it was. He didn’t want to find out the hard way.

  Men ringed the cloudy area, shooting occasionally. The ulvenmen were like the foam of the surf, a trickle preceding the flood.

  Shouts from the front. His horsemen were returning, their mounts lathered and steaming. They rode around the mysterious cloud, staring at it suspiciously. If it weren’t for Lalania’s voice coming faintly out of the center, he was sure they would have attacked it.

  “What the dark is that?” Gregor called.

  “Lalania,” Christopher said, shrugging. “How long do we have?”

  “Ten minutes, maybe less. Do we flee or fight?”

  Christopher threw him a look. It was way too late to flee.

  Cannan snorted. “He means, do you flee. Your army will buy you time. Your horse and magic will buy you ground. Rank can still flee this fight and live, Christopher.”

  “Do you want to go?” Christopher asked him.

  Cannan looked at him, a level gaze that nonetheless suggested reproach. “My place is between you and death.”

  “We’re not going to die here,” Christopher said, stung by the well-deserved rebuke. He had only meant to ask Cannan’s tactical advice, and instead managed to insult the man’s courage. He looked again at the cloud. It seemed to be clearing a bit, and he could see no treetops peeking out from it. Meanwhile, the gunfire was becoming more frequent.

  “Finish up, Lala,” he called out.

  The dust settled rapidly, leaving behind a magnificent fortification of wood and earth. A large double gate faced Christopher, swinging open by the efforts of two misty figures that sank into the ground as soon as their task was done. In the doorway Lalania bowed, smiling triumphantly and covered in leaves, dirt, and sawdust.

  “Enter and be welcome, my lords,” she said.

  “You heard the lady,” Gregor bawled. “Get your asses in there!”

  The troops stampeded the fort, dragging wagons and horses after them. They poured onto the walls, throwing block and tackle onto the waiting frames, winching cannons into place. The fort was a clone of the plan they had been building to for the last few weeks. They knew the layout from memory, the defense through practice. Christopher could feel hope soaring.

  “Could she always do that?” he asked Gregor.

  Gregor was not amused. “Nobody can do that. Even your dark damned Lord Wizard can’t do that. I have no idea what in the nine hells she did, and I don’t think I want to know.”

  Lalania was not available to discuss the issue, being otherwise engaged. She was singing the morale-boosting song, the one that made everything seem possible despite all odds.

  The last of the men dragged the gate closed behind them, lacing it shut with thick rope in place of bars. The gate was made out of layers and layers of the scraggly jungle trees, so well fitted and tightly bound that no gaps showed. It wasn’t iron-bound timber. It would fail against a battering ram or siege engine. But against a horde of axe-wielding monsters, it would buy them sufficient time to empty their carbines and reload. That was enough.

  Dead ulvenmen began piling up around the fort. New ones kept coming, a rising tide. Christopher went to join his command staff in the center of the fort. Their only job was to wait until the shaman appeared.

  “Does anybody know why they are attacking during the day?” he asked.
r />   Gregor had an answer. “They hoped to catch us on the march.”

  “But they failed. So why are they still coming?”

  “The price of ill discipline,” Gregor answered. “The charge has been sounded. If the shaman calls his horde off now, they will melt into the jungle and disappear. This is his one best shot.”

  “That means he is coming for you,” Cannan said. “You must prepare.”

  Christopher nodded, agreeing. It felt odd to pray while standing, with a sword in his hands, but that was the way of a war god.

  A general cry of dismay rose from the front of the fort, unchecked by the booming of cannons. Christopher glanced at his team. They squared their shoulders, drew their weapons, and followed Cannan to the forward wall.

  After mounting the top, Christopher could see something out over the smoke-covered battlefield. It looked like night, as Charles had said, a patch of darkness moving purposefully toward the fort, towering over the scrubby trees.

  The darkness also towered over his fort. Whatever it was had to be stopped before it breached the walls. Cannons fired into the darkness, as futilely as firing at a cloud. Karl’s suspicion was borne out. The shaman had indeed prepared a surprise for them.

  “Light-stones,” Disa said. “Light-stones may counter the darkness.” She went back to hiding behind the lip of the wall.

  Immediately Gregor lunged forward, hurling the stone he carried. It fell short, bouncing off an ulvenman’s head. The ulvenman snarled and gestured rudely. Christopher almost apologized out of habit, but then somebody shot the beast.

  Cannan tossed a light-stone in his hand, weighing his chances against the range. D’Kan snatched it out of the air, bound it to an arrow with a bit of cloth, and shot it into the middle of the cloud.

  The flickering light vanished in the dark.

  Next the stone Gregor had thrown winked out as the darkness advanced over it, a seashell buried under the inrushing wave.

  From the depths of the shadow came the inevitable lightning bolt. Christopher was already prepared. The bolt flared golden on his shield, while D’Kan and Cannan stood a safe distance away and returned fire with blazing carbines, aiming at the point of emergence. The darkness advanced unimpeded, and Christopher took an involuntary step backward.