by K. J. Coble
“As soon as I have finished in here,” Sarcha said, “I will be ready.”
Clegg seemed to fight with himself, at once wanting an answer but also wanting freedom from what had certainly become to him a cursed quest. Finally, he nodded to the miners, who scattered up the passageway. With them gone, he approached her. “This is the end of it then?” he asked. “There is nothing more?”
“Have things not been as I described?” Sarcha asked pleasantly. “Are you and yours not wealthy beyond anything you have known in ages?”
“Yes, but...” He glanced around the chamber and could not hide a shiver. “My lady, surely your share of the prize is formidable, as well. I cannot help but...” He trailed off.
“What, Clegg?”
The dwarf bit his lip and he shook his head. “It’s this place...I cannot help but feel like you should leave whatever lies here at rest.”
Sarcha laughed, long and mockingly. The simple fool worries for me. She turned and caressed the effigy of the dead deity. “Oh, Clegg Greatclub; I have nothing to fear here.”
Clegg looked down. His expression hardened at the chiding. “As you wish, Lady Sarcha.” He spun on his heel to go.
“Open the escape route,” Sarcha called after him, “and keep the goblins away.” She leaned against the casket, let an arm drape over the lid. “I will not be long.”
Chapter Eleven
Councils of War
The cacophony of the Expeditionary Force’s landing at the docks of the fishing town of Graystone was stirred to a higher pitch as columns of smoke stained the sky to the north, going red like clotting blood in the light of dawn. The village of Koen was burning.
Anatius, Speaker of the doomed town, wept outside the tent erected near the beach as the command post of the gathering army. Vohl tried to ignore the man’s sobs and the gentle exortations of friends as he listened to reports from the locals, gathered around a table provided by a Graystone shopkeeper.
“The village is lost, but we were able to screen its inhabitants as they fled,” said the chieftain of the centaur community, who Jayce had introduced to all as Taul Rising Gale of the Arhem. The centaur shifted, clearly uncomfortable as he leaned low in the tent on folded forelimbs. “They have a good head start and most will pass behind your lines by midday.”
Dodso, looking comical at the focal point of the gathered fighting men, nodded and pointed his baton at a map unfurled across the table. “Then they’ve crossed into the open lands.” He looked at Captain Ulomo and asked the young Legionnaire, “Shall we wait for them here in Graystone?”
Ulomo’s imperious brows knit in thought. “It’s not the best. The town sits in a marshy bowl and possesses no wall. We don’t have the time to erect an adequate palisade.”
“Then we fall back?” Dodso asked.
“No!” barked Wendynn, the Speaker of Graystone and a corpulent man who got around surprisingly fast. “You cannot abandon my town, too!”
“But it was all right to leave Koen to its fate?” wailed Anatius, leaping to his feet and rushing into the tent with bleary eyes.
Dodso winced. “No one knew how quickly the barbarians would arrive, Speaker.”
“Easy for you to say, gnome!” Anatius roared. “Kobolon a hundred miles away on the other side of the lake!”
Vohl shot Muddle, waiting just outside the tent with his hands on his axe, a warning look and stepped close to Dodso.
“We shouldn’t withdraw,” Ulomo said to the relief of Wendynn and even more obviously Dodso. “The initiative is everything and is still ours for the taking. I’m merely saying this town is no place to make a stand.”
“Then further north,” Wendynn said, his triple chins quivering with excitement. “I know a place, a glade north of here where the priests of Habbah hold their Midsummer rituals. It’s a narrow strip of open land, flanked on one side by the woods and by the lake on the other.”
Ulomo glanced at Dodso. “I’d have to see it, but it sounds ideal. I’ll have a rider sent north to scout it.”
“No need,” Taul Rising Gale rumbled. “My folk have passed through there already and it is as the Speaker says. If we leave now, my warriors and I can get ahead of the Skinners and hinder their march, give you time to muster in the glade.”
“You plan to stay around this time?” Arlen Flecher called from the opposite side of the tent.
The centaur eyed him for a chilly moment. “My people have run far enough. If the Skinners pass through here, there will be few places left to go.”
“Then we will fight in Graystone Glade!” Dodso said, rapping the baton against the tabletop and managing one of his disarming smiles that only Vohl recognized as desperately forced. “Speaker Anatius,” the gnome said, “can we still count on the men of Koen, after all that has happened?”
Anatius stiffened, wiping some of the tears from his face. “You can count on us to seek our vengeance.”
“Good enough,” Dodso replied, meeting the man’s gaze. He looked around at the Speakers and militia commanders. “All right. Once your contingents are fully ashore you have leave to take them north. Speaker Wendynn, might we have local guides to lead the way? Good. We will shake everyone out into a...uh...a formal line in the glade once everyone is up. Is everyone agreed?” The gathering rumbled its ascent. “Good. I’ll see you all there.”
The meeting broke up. Dodso flopped down on a stool beside the table and let his baton clatter across the maps. Vohl knelt at his side and put a hand on the gnome’s shoulder. Muddle came in as the last of the gathering filtered out. Jayce and Illah followed him.
“That was pretty well done,” Vohl said.
“I didn’t know Koen would already be vulnerable,” Dodso said, his face pinched with warring emotions. “I told them I’d be back.”
“It’s not your fault,” Illah said in an uncharacteristically gentle tone.
Vohl patted Dodso’s back. “Try not to beat yourself up over it.”
“Damn Vennitius for sending me here!” Dodso struck the baton from the table and shot back to his feet to pace. “I feel like a fool. I don’t know what I’m doing here!”
“There are good people out there,” Muddle said. “Many who have served in the Levies or—” he exchanged a glance with Vohl “—the Legions.” He clenched his axe to his chest. “And there are more who just know how to fight.”
“It’ll be all right,” Vohl said softly, wondering, as he noticed the smoke on the horizon again, if he really felt that way himself.
LONADIEL WATCHED THE Skinners pour forth from the blaze of Koen, ladened with plunder, many drunk on stolen wine, slow to reform their columns for the southward march. As before, no one had stayed to hold the settlement against them, though the barbarians’ route had been marked with increasingly frequent ambushes by Valley folk and the reappearance of those damned centaurs who swept from the wilderness in lightning attacks only to vanish just as quickly.
Too slow, Lonadiel thought, noting that the sun was near noon. Every hour spent sacking villages or desecrated holy sites is another hour the Valley has to prepare itself. He drew his saber a fifth of the way from its sheath and slammed it back into the scabbard in frustration. Don’t these fools understand that?
A runner appeared from the road leading south, dashing northward along the column to catcalls from men who mistook his task for cowardice. To the youth’s credit, he ignored their folly and left the road, angled across the fields outside Koen towards the low hill where the Skinner elders and Ango Morug gathered in council. Knowing the boy came from the forward elements scouting ahead, Lonadiel turned and trotted uphill to join the gathering and hear word of what awaited them.
The runner, scrawny and too young to have yet won another’s skin to wear in battle, skidded to a halt before his betters and prostrated himself, forehead to the ground in deference. Lonadiel reached the gathering in time to hear an elder bid the boy rise and speak.
“Resistance stiffens ahead, elders,” the runner said.<
br />
“More centaurs?” Ango Morug asked, fingered his staff.
The boy nodded. “The horse-creatures as well as Valley dwellers. They gather a few hours’ march south of here, in a narrow strip of open ground. There are hundreds there already and more coming up.”
“They’ve decided to concentrate,” Lonadiel said, meeting Morug’s gaze. “We have to get the tribes moving. We waste daylight. If we intend to fight them today, before they bring up more, we must move.”
“Let them bring up more!” one of the elders snarled. “We will crush the soft city-folk wherever they are!”
“No,” Morug said, “the elf is right.” The elders looked as one at the wizard. “We must fight them today. And today we will destroy them!”
The elders rumbled their approval and broke up to see to spurring their folk on. Within moments, the Horns of the Hunt were blaring and the great horde was thundering south, trampling the embers of Koen under thousands of boots.
Morug smirked at Lonadiel. “The hour of decision looms near. Are you ready?”
“Are you?” Lonadiel shot back.
Morug cackled and turned to wander downhill to join the column seething for battle. Lonadiel shivered, could not escape the impression of the wizard being in on some joke he did not yet understand. He brushed it aside as he thought of Illah. Will you be there, beloved, waiting for me? Knowing her the way only he did, Lonadiel already had his answer. Hour of decision, indeed.
This time, he would be ready.
ILLAH STOOD ATOP THE low hill overlooking Graystone Glade, fingering the grip of her saber. The sun wandered closer to the horizon, its light beginning to deepen as shadows slanted across the fields below. Thunder rippled from the north, the all-too-familiar drums of the Faces. Soon, she knew, would come the harsh cry of their horns, the voices bawling for blood and battle.
And he would be with them.
The glade stretched a quarter of a mile north from her spot, open grasses speckled with the first blooms of wildflowers swaying in a gentle southeasterly breeze, carrying with it the smells of an army, steel, sweaty leather, trampled earth, and fear. Lake Remordan lapped the narrow, sandy band of beach to the right. Dense wood darkened the left. The narrow wagon path linking the lakeside villages in a chain for miles south ran along the tree line and passed over a creek glittering in an irregular line along the foot of the hill before meandering southwest and disappearing into the forest.
The Expeditionary Force mustered south of the creek and the soggy strip of marsh lining it. Illah had traveled much of the Valley in her days in the region, much of it at his side, learning the ways of the people the Yntuil had tasked themselves with protecting from themselves. Watching the army now, she figured she saw nearly every variation of those peoples massed below her now.
The banded-steel and leather line of the Legionnaires arrayed just below the crest of the hill, shields rammed erect in the ground and spears leaned against them while the professional soldiers longued, smoking pipes and shaking their heads at the preparations of the amateurs around them. The command group, Dodso and the militia leaders, waited behind the Legion’s hard ranks, conversing in low, tight tones Illah could not make out over the general din. The Legionnaires had the right flank, anchored on the edge of the hill, which fell off in a jumble of sandstone boulders into the lake.
The hill tapered off to the left, forming a low ridge overlooking the creek. The rest of the army arrayed along its irregular slope. The forces of the lakeside towns clustered up front, closest to the creek in a wall of home-made shields, weapons that were more heirlooms passed down from the hard men who’d first settled the Valley, and a generous leavening of farm implements. Behind them, the more formal and numerous militias of wealthy Andenburgh and Eredynn formed their lines; Andenburgh’s locally-renowned longbowmen clustering at the height of the rise with the long, slender line of Eredynn’s swordsmen, many veterans of the Empire’s various services, screening them. Shouldered between the longbowmen and the block of the Fifth Cohort, the gnomes of Kobolon dined on ample rations and wine that would have set a professional quartermaster to tirades. Occasionally, the diminutive figures paused to check their crossbow strings and eye the forested northern end of the glade.
Illah wanted to believe it would all be enough, but in her mind’s eye the Watch Tower of the Yntuil burned and fell before an ocean of howling barbarians. She shook the image away. None of it matters; I am through running.
A rustle of grass at her back interrupted Illah’s dark reverie. She looked over her shoulder to see Jayce and Danelle coming up the hill to join her.
“Quite the sight,” Jayce said, smiling as if they were at a festival rather than preparing to kill or be killed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Valley muster like this.”
“They form a respectable battle line,” Illah replied. “We’ll see if they can hold it together.”
“You don’t give them enough credit, my dear,” Jayce said. “I’ve lived amongst these people more than half my life. They can do great things when they work together.”
“I hope you’re right.” Illah frowned at him, his strangely youthful face. “Half your life? How old are you, Zerron?”
Jayce chuckled. “Not so young as I look.”
“You must tell me,” Illah pressed. “I may never get another chance to ask.”
Jayce glanced at Danelle, winked at the girl who smirked in reply. “Well...let’s just say the profession of magic has its fringe benefits.” He met Illah’s gaze. “After we all come out of this, maybe I’ll tell you.”
Illah extended her hand to Jayce. “I will hold you to that.”
Jayce accepted her hand, clasping forearm-to-forearm in the way of the Yntuil. His smile dimmed. “Your...traitor is out there?”
Illah released Jayce’s hand, felt chill prickle like sweat across her skin as she gazed into the northern distance. “He is. I...feel him. He will seek me in the fight.” She took a shuddering breath. “He will find me.”
“Maybe we’ll find him,” Jayce said. To her confused expression he added, “Stay near me during the battle.”
Illah shook her head. “Damn it, no! No more heroics, I said before.”
“Nothing like that,” Jayce said with a wink. “When the battle is joined, I will make myself a target by engaging in a conspicuous way. The Skinners’ wizard will no doubt single me out. I will have a little surprise waiting for him, one you can help with.”
“Who will shield the army?”
“I will,” Danelle said with a touch of indignance. “I am strong enough.”
“Yes, you are,” Jayce said, patting the girl’s shoulder. “Though you must not try to help me, no matter what happens.”
“But, Master—”
“You will do as I say, girl,” Jayce ordered, taking on fatherly sternness. “No matter what you think you see, you must stay with the army.” Hardened features softened. “Fear not. Lady Illah will be at my side.”
Danelle shot Illah a look that bit with a dagger’s point.
The command group was breaking up downhill. Vohl and Muddle, who’d lingered near Dodso during the meeting, split off and strolled uphill. Vohl wore a corslet of hastily-touched-up chain mail over his tunic and held a battered, conical helm of obviously Legion origin under one arm. Muddle hefted his huge axe over a shoulder. Vohl murmured something that set the halfbreed to snorting.
“How goes it with our glorious leader?” Jayce called out to the pair.
“Ah, you know...” Vohl said with his lopsided grin. “The Speakers bicker, Ulomo tells them what they need to do, and Dodso is shitting his pants. It’s the same as before.”
“Where will we find you when things get started?” Jayce asked.
“Why, I think we’ll stay close to the Lady Illah,” Vohl replied, “make certain none of the Skinners annoy her too much.”
Illah sighed and looked away to avoid letting the man see her amused smile. “Stand too close to me, Rhenn,” sh
e said, “and I’ll spare the Faces the trouble of finishing you.”
Vohl guffawed. “Like I’ve said before; threaten me any time, lady.” His features went serious as he looked at Jayce. “No, I think we’ll be near Dodso. He’s...well...none of this has been easy on him.”
“You’re a good man,” Jayce said.
Vohl waved off the comment with mock annoyance but Illah saw the concern in the man’s eyes.
Cries echoed and a horn blared. The treeline at the glade’s northern edge rippled with motion as centaurs burst forth, birds and small animals scattering before them. Dozens galloped south across the grass while a smaller group slowed and wheeled about, drawing arrows from quivers slung along bronzed backs and knocking them to their bone and sinew shortbows. They shook themselves out into a widely-spaced screen and trotted back towards the trees. Shortbows came up and Illah picked out the momentary glimmer of arrows slashing into the woods.
A band of men erupted into the open, bawling as they charged with weapons raised. The centaurs backpedaled before them, arms rising to the quivers, drawing bow strings, and loosing in single, fluid motions. Attackers began crumpling and the group’s leader reconsidered, blowing a horn call to fall back into the cover of the trees, leaving their dead and wounded behind. More horns sounded and a great roar went up from the gloom of the woods. The centaur skirmishers wheeled again and dashed to catch up to their kin now cantering through a part opened in the cheering Expeditionary Force’s line.
Illah sighed. “It’s starting.”
Jayce held out his hand to Vohl. “Good man or no, take care of your self, Vohl Rhenn. You too, Muddle.”
“That goes for all of us,” Muddle mumbled like a distant thunderstorm.
“Agreed,” Illah added softly.
Somewhere to the north, beyond the glade amongst a mass of killers, Lonadiel was coming for her. It wasn’t so much the fear of dying as the inevitablility of facing him that haunted her, facing the answers behind his treachery and her part in it. The knowledge hung about her like chains that bit into her shoulders, bit through to a soul already sick.
