Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (33 page)

By moving her head slightly and changing the angle, she could see not only the figures of the lightly armored Dalarn men running toward her, with axes in hand and their shields slung on their backs, she could even make out two or three faces that she recognized as young men from her father’s retinue.

“How you do that?”

“It’s a simple water spell,” Patrice told her in an annoyingly condescending tone.” Arrayed properly, it reflects the light and expands the vision. Quite a useful little trick, but entirely harmless.”

“Like young Savoner mages?” she snapped, irritated. She was already on edge, knowing that good men were likely to be dying soon right before her eyes, and she had no patience for this poorly timed male tomfoolery. Blais’s chuckle turned into an open guffaw. “Lord Patrice, sometimes Dalarn men play knife game before women. They think to impress us but only stab their hands. Maybe even cut off finger. Is no good. You want to impress me? Win the battle. No play water games.”

The battlemage wasn’t abashed. He grinned at her and shrugged. “I did not mean to show off for you, my lady. I only thought you might like to see better. Sadly, His Royal Highness has not ordered me to win the battle, but perhaps I can hope that to be granted an opportunity to impress you if events proceed differently than we anticipate. In any event, my lady, if you don’t wish to use the lens, simply pass your hand through it to break the spell. Your hand will get wet, but touching it will not do you the slightest harm.”

She didn’t favor him with a response, instead she returned her eye to the suspended disk, watching as more of her father’s men emerged from the trees. She tried to count them, hoping that too many had not been lost in the attack on the aalvarg encampment, but it was impossible. Still, the fact that there were too many of them for her to count easily struck her as a good sign. The men were running easily too, without any frightened looks backward, and they ran together in loose groups that seemed to indicate that this was an intentional and disciplined retreat rather than a panicked rout.

Fjotra recognized the last group of men as some of her father’s most renowned warriors. She saw Steinthor, Glammad, and Asmund Hairy-Arse. Unlike the others, the rearguard was carrying their shields on their arms. Several appeared to be wounded, and she could see that their axes, in some cases still dripping blood, had been recently used.

She stifled a scream as the man behind Glammad abruptly disappeared. One moment, he had been running alongside the big black-haired warrior and approaching the open ground, and the next, he was gone, pulled violently to the ground by something she couldn’t see.

The men preceding them had already turned and formed a shield wall about a hundred paces from the treeline. They walked slowly backward as a unit, awaiting the rush of the still-unseen enemy.

Steinthor, easily recognizable with his long, waist-length blond braid, shouted something. In response, ten of the men at the forest edge suddenly stopped running and whirled around, while the rest of the warriors in the final group sprinted as fast as they could manage, weighed down as they were with their weapons and armor, for the relative safety of the shield wall.

“What do they do?” Fjotra cried out in dismay.

“They can’t all reach the others, my lady. Those who stay behind will slow the wolves long enough for the rest of the rearguard to join the main body.”

Steinthor had no sooner given the command than the aalvarg burst from the trees like an dark and monstrous river overrunning its banks.

They ran low to the ground, using their long-claw like hands in much the same way she had used them when climbing the hill. They were every bit as dreadful and ugly as she remembered from those terrible days of flight. The ulfin were perhaps one-third man and two-thirds wolf—a demonic abomination with none of man’s nobility nor the wolf’s canine grace, seemingly created to do nothing but kill and destroy. They were somewhat smaller than they appeared in her nightmares. It was actually hard to tell exactly how tall they were due to the way they ran on all fours, but they were certainly shorter and lighter than the Dalarn men.

Many were unarmed. Those few that carried weapons bore either clubs, rudely sharpened stakes, or, occasionally, a weapon that Fjotra recognized as being of Dalarn origin. Fortunately, for the sake of the men arrayed on the field, she saw none carrying the bows that, however crude, had proven sufficiently lethal at Garn.

Their armor, to the extent they had any, was of equally poor quality. One large beast missing its left eye wore a man’s leather breastplate on its back as if it were a saddle.

Poorly armored as they were, they howled like demons as they leaped upon the ten brave men who were sacrificing themselves for the sake of their brothers-in-arms. Six of the monsters fell at the first exchange, their skulls cloven and their breasts shattered by Dalarn axes. But after a moment’s hesitation, the grey flood swirled viciously around the small circle of doomed warriors as if they were a few small stones attempting to dam a winter-fed river.

First one man fell, his leg bitten through. Then the next was overpowered by a huge beast that leaped over its fellows and knocked him down, tearing at his throat.

Horrified and sickened, Fjotra lifted her hand to banish the sorcerous lens. But Patrice reached out and stopped her.

“Look away for a little while, if it troubles you,” he urged her. “It’s dreadful, I know, but so far, everything is going exactly as planned. And you may want to see what comes next.”

“Where is your prince?” she demanded. “Why don’t he come out to help them?”

“It’s too soon,” Blais said with a growl. “If he attacks when they’re too close to the woods, they’ll simply fade back into the trees where our horse can’t follow. We have to draw them out, get them entangled with your infantry. The Prince doesn’t seek to merely drive them from the field, he wants to smash them utterly.”

So did she, Fjotra realized, as she felt impotent fury coursing through her at the sight of the foul beasts that had killed half her friends, slain her mother, destroyed her village, and forced her proud people to submit to the rule of a foreign king. In less than thirty years, the aalvarg had done what neither the Witchkings nor generations of royal Savoners had managed in five centuries: They had defeated the northern tribes and forced them to the very edge of extinction.

But they have not defeated
us,
she reminded herself, for we still stand and fight! And, with the aid of the southerners and by the grace of the gods, one day we will kill them all, every single one, for what they have done to us!

Even so, she did not know if she could have the ruthless patience of the Red Prince who could wait so calmly, watching his allies fight and die. Steeling herself, she looked back through the magical lens and saw to her horror that part of the monstrous pack was tearing at the unmoving bodies of the ten fallen men while the leading line of wolves was now loping toward the Dalarn shield wall.

The warriors there had stopped retreating and were arrayed in a semi-circular fashion with the ends farther back than the center. It was three men deep and about sixty wide, which suggested that about twenty warriors had fallen in the attack and subsequent retreat. Twenty men was a pittance in comparison with how many men, women, and children had died in Garn and the nearby villages alone. And yet the bravery of their heroic deaths made her want to weep for them.

The shield wall was not such easy prey for the wolf-people. Fearsome as they were, they were not fearless, and they shied away from hurling themselves upon it. It was easy to see that they had experience of such formations before.

From the hilltop, the shield wall looked like a single great creature, bristling with spears and axeheads. Despite their greater numbers, the aalvarg facing it seemed reluctant to pay the price in blood required to attack it. They prowled back and forth, snapping at the Dalarn, whom they outnumbered at least two to one, but after one scrawny beast ventured too close to the shield wall and was promptly dispatched by an axemen who bravely darted out from the line, they refused to get any closer.

“Undisciplined cowards,” she heard Blais grumble. “Come on, you bastards, get yourselves stuck in now!”

“What’s that?” Patrice responded, pointing to a small group of wolf creatures emerging from the forest. “
Sacre bleu
, this could be a problem.”

Twelve black-furred aalvarg, bigger and less feral than their grey-furred counterparts, stalked onto the field of battle as if the Dalarn warriors weren’t even there. They were escorting two large timber wolves that were nearly three times the size of any Fjotra had seen before, as well as a powerful aalvarg with mottled fur who wore an iron breastplate as well as a longsword in a scabbard.

The warrior wasn’t quite as big as his black-furred guards, but his posture was more upright than the others, and he radiated a keen sense of intelligence. But he soon showed himself to be as grotesquely bestial as the rest. As he approached the half-eaten remains of the fallen Dalarn, he sniffed at them, then briefly went down to all fours and contemptuously raised his leg, releasing a large stream of urine over the bodies of the dead men. The aalvarg howled with what sounded like delight.

The dead men’s former companions howled too, but in rage.

“
Damne salaud!
” the elder battlemage cursed, expressing Fjotra’s own indignation.

“Fascinating,” Patrice commented, unmoved by the vulgar spectacle. “They must have a primitive aristocracy of sorts. Perhaps even a priesthood, I shouldn’t wonder. I imagine those two wolves he’s got with him could be some sort of religious iconology, perhaps even symbols of his authority. Why didn’t you say anything about this hiearchy of theirs, Lady Fjotra?”

“I know nothing of this. I never seen it before.”

But the young mage’s suggestion struck her as a sensible one. The dreadful beasts that she had seen before, against whom her father had been fighting for nearly his entire life, had never shown any signs of an formidable intelligence. Their ships were as primitive as their bows, the sharpened sticks they used as spears, and the rock-studded clubs they used as axes. They had always defeated the Dalarn with their ferocity and their sheer numbers. Perhaps only now, with the broken remnants of Fjotra’s people penned into their last redoubt, did their leaders dare to openly show themselves.

With a combination of slaps, snaps, and snarls, the big aalvarg and his bodyguard soon had the huge pack of wolf-people back into a loose form of battle array. One of the giant black-furred monsters claimed the pride of place in the center, while two more assumed positions at the head of the left and right wings.

But their tactics were still simple to the point of nonexistence, as after a series of what sounded like ritualistic barks and howls, the aalvarg commander threw back his head and emitted a long ululating howl that was echoed by his warriors as they lowered themselves to all fours and began to rush forward like the beasts they were.

A few, mostly those armed with scavenged Dalarn weapons, stayed upright as they ran. One forgot that he was carrying an iron-tipped spear, stepped on the butt end of it with his rear leg, and somehow managed to impale his lower jaw.

As Fjotra watched, holding her breath, the speedy grey mass of aalvarg smashed against the round iron shields of the waiting Dalarn warriors like the waves of a tempestuous sea crashing against a rocky island shore.

MARCUS

The legate of Legio XVII looked less than thrilled to see Marcus entering his command tent. Unlike his tribunes, Marcus Saturnius had clearly not bathed, and if the five piles of parchment and assorted scrolls that littered his table were any guide, he would not be visiting the baths of Gallidromum anytime soon. He looked exhausted and hollow-eyed, and he barely managed to lift a hand in response to Marcus’s salute.

“Your father sends his greetings, Clericus. He is well, and I expect you have heard he will be remaining in Amorr for the winter elections. Now, as you can see, I have no time for idle conversation, as it appears that Crescentius has somehow managed to avoid making a single decision of import in my absence.”

“Sir,” Marcus said, refusing to take the hint and leave.

“Still, I suppose I should be grateful that he managed to get the legion here in one piece without getting waylaid or accidentally starting a war with anyone. It would be a bit much to expect bureaucratic efficiency to accompany command competence.”

“Sir,” Marcus repeated.

Saturnius stared at him with a mixture of annoyance and resignation. “Very well, Tribune Valerius, what is it?”

“I’m afraid I have bad news for you, sir. I have some reason to suspect there is already another legion in Cynothicus.”

Saturnius whipped his head up, but then he made a dismissive gesture. “That’s absurd! There isn’t another legion within fifty leagues of us, unless you’re talking about the remnants of the XIVth. But they retreated to Clusium after being thrashed by the Cynothii. The Legio Civitas is heading for their winter quarters, and the new legion Lucius Favronius raised will be training through the winter. I don’t expect to see Durus here until the spring.”