Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (120 page)

“Why?” Marcus frowned. “Won’t Magnus be less likely to fear a trap if I appear before him myself?”

The Severan shook his head slowly. “No, Valerian, he doesn’t fear any trap. You cannot come, because if you do, your uncle will kill you.”

Marcus stared at the other tribune. He saw no dissembling in the man’s aristocratic face, only a mild sort of pity in his eyes. And a cold fury began to rise in his own breast, as he thought he realized what the Severan was telling him without actually making the accusation explicit.

It was Magnus who had killed Corvinus, no doubt in revenge for Fortex’s death. And Marcus knew Magnus well enough to be certain that merely trading a son for a son would not be enough for his vengeful uncle.

“Come away with me,” Caitlys urged three days later.

Night had fallen, she was finally back from her daily reconnaissance flight, and she was not pleased to hear of Marcus’s decision to surrender the legion to Magnus. She and Marcus stood in the command tent, along with the Savondese man, Theuderic, and the other elf, Lady Everbright.

Caitlys demanded Marcus’s attention. “What is this war to you? You don’t even know what the sides are, still less which side you favor!”

The Savondese man laughed. “Daddy on one side, uncle on the other, and little boy blue blood caught in the middle. Now there’s an argument for monarchy and hereditary rule!”

“Shut up, Theuderic,” Marcus said sourly. He found the man’s nonchalant sarcasm irritating in the extreme. He wished he could spare Caitlys long enough to have her carry the man back to Savondir. “Was Severus Aulan telling the truth about the Larinii forces?”

“He was,” Theuderic nodded and poured himself a liberal portion of the red Galabrian that the late commander had left behind. “Two armies, two camps, each about six days’ march from here. I’d say three thousand in the one, six thousand in the other.”

The uneven division was potentially intriguing, offering as it did a very faint ray of hope. “How far away from each other are they?”

“Not far enough,” Theuderic answered readily, dashing his hopes. He saluted Marcus with his brimming goblet. “The same thought occurred to me, but they’re too close together. Maybe three, four hours apart at most. And they’re in close contact. We saw riders passing back and forth between the two camps all afternoon.”

“They wouldn’t have to hold us long before Magnus would be on our tail.”

The Savondese laughed at the absurd notion of trying to attack the two Larinii armies with two enemy legions at his rear.

Marcus growled under his breath. “Well, it wasn’t much of a chance, but it seems even that door is shut as well. Caitlys, you know I can’t simply fly off with you. How can I surrender my men to Magnus without surrendering myself as well?”

“Why not?” the elfess demanded. “How do you know this uncle will not kill you? An elf would say anything, promise anything, to get you in his power. How do you know he does not seek your blood in payment for your cousin’s?”

“Because Magnus isn’t an elf,” Marcus wearily lied. He hadn’t told her about Severus Aulan’s warning. “My blood won’t bring my cousin back to him. Look, I don’t want to take sides in this war anymore than you do, especially when I could easily find myself on the wrong one. But unless your bird can fly four thousand men and their supplies away from here in less than three days, I can’t think of any honorable alternative.”

Caitlys, still clad in her flying leathers, glared at him unhappily. Lithriel was silent, as she had been throughout.

Only Theuderic was in a conversational mood, wandering about the chamber as he sipped at his wine, admiring the thick carpets and bright mosaics that decorated the walls.

“Given how you officers live, Clericus, I can’t see why you’re agonizing over this affair. Join your uncle, and then if you happen to find yourself on the wrong side, by which of course I mean the losing one, then what is to prevent you from switching yet again? There’s no newly converted adherent to the cause so welcome as the one who brings an army with him. At any rate, all of this is only a sideshow anyhow. We are but the playthings of the gods. And when those bastards war, kings and empires fall.”

Marcus was still attempting to sort out Theuderic’s cynical meanderings when a guard entered the chamber and stood stiffly at attention. “What is it?”

“A visitor seeks an audience with you, General. A dwarf, General.”

The two elves looked at each other, then at Marcus.

Theuderic laughed, a little too loudly. “Quite the menagerie you’re assembling here, General.”

“Does this dwarf have an orange beard that is…” Marcus gestured at his chin. “Sort of short and not entirely dwarf-like?”

“Indeed, General.” The guard’s face remained impassive, and yet somehow managed to convey his surprise. “Shall I send him in to you?”

“Yes, yes, absolutely,” Marcus said. A moment later, he was on his feet, warmly greeting the dwarf who had briefly been his slave. “Lodi son of Dunmorin! What in the name of Iron Mountain brings you here?”

The dwarf was wider than Marcus remembered, and he wore what would have passed for a respectable beard on a human face, but it was short enough to qualify as clean-shaven for a dwarf. He looked exhausted, and the lines on his face were deeper than the last time Marcus had seen him, almost two years ago. But those dark brown eyes still sparkled with pleasure.

“I been hearing you got yesself an army, boy, but I didn’t believe it. Figured it were a different Valerius. They just hand these things out to yez Amorrans?”

They embraced briefly but warmly, and Marcus couldn’t help but notice that the dwarf had not bathed in what must have been a very long time. He could also feel that, beneath the weather-stained cloak, Lodi was wearing heavy chain armor.

“It suddenly strikes me that you may not be visiting for the sheer pleasure of seeing me.”

“No, but I’m damn glad to see ye, lad. Damn glad!” The dwarf wrinkled his nose and glared at the elves. “I sees you picked up some bad habits in Elebrion.”

“You’ve met the Princess Shadowsong, of course,” Marcus said, stifling a smile at the disdainful way both elfesses were looking down their elegant noses at the dwarf. “But allow me to present to you the Lady Lithriel Everbright of the Greenwood, and her companion—”

“I knows the other elf and the mage. Ran into them in Malkan. The Golden Rose, as I recall. Killed a man there. What the hell is they doing here with ye?”

Marcus stared at the dwarf, then looked over at Theuderic, who had turned white and was very uncharacteristically tongue-tied. The Savondese man looked to the ceiling and shook his head, then met his eyes and shrugged helplessly.

“A mage? Is that true?” Marcus took a step toward the Savondese nobleman and put his hand to his sword hilt. “You’re not truly a mage, are you?”

“Marcus!” Caitlys protested, but he waved her off, waiting to hear what Theuderic had to say.

“I do indeed have the honor to be one of the King’s Own,” Theuderic admitted. “Truly. Though rest assured that no one has lied to you. As it happens, I am also the Comte de Merovech.”

“Do you have any idea what would happen to you if anyone outside this room knew what you are, you cursed fool?” Marcus was nearly as frightened as he was furious. The senior centurions had already made it clear that neither they nor the men approved of his unorthodox auxiliaries. If they learned that Marcus had not only been relying upon elves but upon a Savondese mage as well, they might not merely mutiny, they very well might burn him with the magician.

“I imagine much the same thing that would happen to me,” Caitlys answered, placing a slender hand on Marcus’s armored forearm. “Control yourself, my dear. He hasn’t been doing anything he shouldn’t. Much of anything. I’ve kept a close watch on him.”

“You knew, as well?”

Caitlys rolled her eyes.

“Of course I knew!”

Marcus didn’t know if he felt more foolish or betrayed. “Why does everyone seem to know more about what is going on than I do? Why does even Lodi know him? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Marcus,” Lodi’s gruff voice broke in. “I knows the Savoner and the other elf because we was all in Malkan at the same time last winter.” The dwarf glanced at Theuderic, then back to Marcus. “Lad, there’s an army of orcs hereabouts. It’s real big, they got some otherworld muscle behind it, and it’s coming this way.”

An army of orcs? Invading the lands of men? Marcus wouldn’t have thought it possible a moment ago. But Lodi was right: The news was perhaps the only thing that could have convinced him to put the question of the mage to the side, at least for the moment. “How big is ‘real big’?”

“Real damn big. We counted roundabout two hunnert thousand. Me and one of the lads was hunting in the mountains out west, and we come across them on the way back. Don’t know if they’s intending to go after the elves or strike north toward Savonne, or even maybe hvae another go at Iron Mountain, but I thought someone in the Man lands better know. You was the only one I knowed would listen to me, so we comes and found ye. I tried telling a few folks, but they just looked at me like I had two heads.”

No wonder. Two hundred thousand. They probably thought he was mad. Two hundred thousand orcs! Marcus struggled to grasp the concept. There had never been an army so large, not in all the histories he’d ever read. The largest army Amorr had ever put into the field at one time was fifty thousand strong—eight legions plus auxiliaries. With an army four times that size, the logistics would be absolutely impossible.

“You’re certain of this? You said ‘we’ were in the mountains. Who is we? And did you see them yourself, with your own eyes? What do you mean that you came across them?”

“I saw them, lad.” The dwarf snorted. “Me. My own eyes. And ye knows I can count better’n ye. What I means by ‘coming across them’ is that I saw them and the demon altar they was summoning Gor Gor on. This ain’t a raid or the usual campaign, lad. They’s up to something, and it’s something big. I was with another dwarf—a young lad, but real smart. We split up so he could warn the king. If he made it, the elves already know.”

“Well, this would appear to add an interesting complication to the situation,” Theuderic said brightly. The mage was obviously happy to no longer be the subject under discussion.

“Shut up, Northman,” Marcus snapped. “I still might burn you.”

“Marcus,” Caitlys said, “I think there is something you need to know about.”

Marcus slammed his steel gauntlet against his desktop, disturbing two stacks of folios and startling everyone. “Oh, and what else have you been keeping from me? Do you know what—I don’t care! What’s next, you’re going to tell me that Lodi is actually your husband? That the mage here is really a toad? No! I don’t care! All of you can go to the bloody devil as far as I’m concerned!”

He stomped out of the room and headed for the stairs that would lead him to the roof. He needed to get away from them, from the guards, from the men, from the centurions, from everyone who needed something from him, even if it was only a decision. Two guards who had been standing outside his chamber whirled around at the sound of his approach, but he waved them off, and they obediently returned to their stations.

A mage? A mage! How could Caitlys have thought to hide that from him? What could she have been thinking? God, he’d known there was something off about Theuderic. He’d never liked the man, but he’d also never imagined that the irritating Savonner could be a sorcerer.

The trapdoor opened easily, and he clambered up the ladder into the cold night air with more than a little relief. There seemed to be as many fires stretching out in the darkness of the castra below him as there were stars above him. So many fires. It seemed impossible to believe that he was looking out over a defeated army, over a legion that had no choice but to surrender.

Caitlys’s betrayal hurt him, and the thought of surrendering to Magnus frightened him, but it was the knowledge of his failure that rankled at him. It was like a cancer in his stomach eating away at him, at his pride, at his very sense of himself.

Pride. That was his problem. That was his sin. Wasn’t that what Father Gennadius had told him at Solacte? It was his pride that had been the source of his downfall. He’d wanted to prove himself better than Magnus, greater than the great. And why? For what purpose? He’d been seeking his own glory, not Amorr’s, not House Valerius’s, and most certainly not God’s.

Magnus was in rebellion, to be sure, and the attempt to stamp out that rebellion had surely been Marcus’s duty. But if he were honest with himself, brutally honest, the real reason he’d been so eager to meet his uncle on the battlefield was to show him up. To show him who the better Valerian strategist was. He shook his head. It was nothing more or less than simple pride.

He sighed and sat down on the edge of the flat roof and let his legs dangle over the side. He looked up at the sky. It was a clear night with nary a cloud obscuring the stars or either of the moons. Arbhadis was high in the sky to the north, large and luminous, while Ustruel lurked, low, red, and crescent-shaped to the southwest.

“Forgive me, Heavenly Father.” He placed his face in his hands. “Forgive me my pride, my arrogance, and my forgetfulness. Please don’t forget me as I was forgetting You. Give me wisdom, give me knowledge. Show me the way, Dominus—tell me what I am to do! You saved me from the killers at Gallidronum. You saved me from the false priests in Elebrion. So You must have some purpose for me! I will do it, even if that means going to Magnus and to my death. Only show me what it is! Send me a sign! Send me an answer!”