Dark Crusade (8 page)

He had looked upon a thousand such battlefields; it might be that he would look upon a thousand such more. The rising breeze moaned a ghost-song through the waving grassland, and its death-scented breath fanned his billowing red cloak. Following the trail of death, Kane dwindled against the far horizon.

The winds of the tropic storm lashed Ingoldi. Even within the massive fortifications of Ceddi, the monstrous blasts of thunder pounded through the stone walls and rolled along the gloomy hallways. Gusts of water slashed through the balistraria, washing across the stones. Sky-spanning chains of lightning flickered eerily past the narrow apertures, to add their sporadic glare to the flaring cressets along the passages.

No less than the fury of the storm was the rage of Orted Ak-Ceddi.

A year had wrought strange transformations upon the former bandit chieftain, even as a hundred thousand pairs of hands had raised Ceddi from a crumbling pile to a towering and unassailable fortress, had moulded Ingoldi from a sprawling city into a military citadel.

The man who cast no shadow yet showed the pantherlike quickness and the steel-thewed strength of the hunted outlaw. Months of unbridled dissipation had nonetheless begun to leave its mark--clothing his raw-muscled frame with an insidious smoothness of fat, suffusing his ruddy features with shadows and lines of debauchery. His eyes, formerly alight with quick cunning, now blazed with the black flames of fanaticism, and the ponderous dynamism of absolute power.

For the moment the certainty of that absolute power was shaken, and with uncertainty arose consuming rage. With the assumption of godlike power comes the awareness of godlike passions. Not the impaled agonies of all Orted's captains could slake the Prophet's wrath.

Alone he brooded in his chambers, staring out across the storm-swept citadel beyond his tower windows. In his demonic rage, not even the priests of Sataki dared approach him. In the courtyard far below, the violent winds flung about the scarecrow limbs of the impaled officers who had failed him--giving false life to their cold flesh.

"Defeat!" Orted spat, glowering at the puppets that danced for him even in death. "Massacre!"

It mattered nothing that his generals had attempted to argue that an invasion of the southern kingdoms was suicidal folly: that his unbroken chain of victories within Shapeli were only monstrous extensions of mob violence, and that crude numbers, no matter how overpowering, could not hope to prevail in an actual drawn battle against superior discipline and weaponry. The Prophet had quickly silenced such doubts of victory by pointing out that failure to obey his commands was suicidal folly of a far more sinister degree. Sataki commanded that the southern kingdoms be subdued. Sataki must be obeyed.

That his protesting generals had had the temerity to escape his wrath by being among the first to die beneath the charge of the Sandotneri cavalry only blackened the Prophet's rage.

Orted flung open the lattice panes of a window, let the storm beat upon his livid face, the wind lash his perfumed coils of brown hair. Lightning shattered the storm-haunted night, bathing his rigid frame in its hellish glare, splashing a stark highlight to the tossing corpses far below. Stygian darkness, then flickering bursts of intense flame. Orted's movements seemed spasmodic, unreal in the stroboscopic luminance. His thick neck straining, mouth a ghastly rictus--Orted Ak-Ceddi screamed his wrath and his defiance against the howling storm, screamed into the lightning-blasted night, where no living soul dared venture.

"There shall be no defeat!" he roared against the storm. "I shall conquer! I must conquer!"

A titanic bolt of lightning shattered the night, blinding him in its elemental flame--even as its tumultuous thunderclap deafened his hearing.

For a moment Orted Ak-Ceddi saw utter blackness, heard naught but the throbbing of his heart. Then from behind him in his chamber:

"To conquer you must have heavy cavalry."

Orted whirled at the low voice. The door of his private chambers stood open. Limned at the threshold by the flickering lightning--a silhouetted figure, massive, all but filling the doorway. A pair of eyes blazed a hellish blue beneath the storm-tossed mane of red hair.

"I am Kane. You need me."

The shrill laughter of the children chittered through the roiling dust of the parade ground. Drawn by the expanse of open ground beyond Ingoldi's walls, they gathered in shouting packs to watch the bright glitter of the cavalry drill, and to play their endless games of kick-ball. Within the Prophet's capital, the faces of their elders might be haunted and strained, but here beneath the city wall, heedless of the danger from hooves and steel, the children romped about with all the unaffected gusto of their youthful innocence.

Kane had demanded a parade ground on which to train the Prophet's cavalry. Kane demanded; Orted Ak-Ceddi commanded. A hundred thousand pairs of hands obeyed. A square mile of tropical hardwood forest was torn out of the earth. Roots were painstakingly grubbed forth, rocks and boulders hauled away, the denuded plain meticulously levelled and filled in, the sod packed to stony firmness. Where there had been jungle, there was now a square mile of packed earth, flat and barren as a table top.

Kane was impressed. He remembered the deadly piranha that infested the rivers of the southwestern portion of the Great Northern Continent, and the voracious march of the army ants that swarmed through the jungles there.

The parade ground stood ready and waiting when the first regiments of cavalry began to sift through the forest barrier to converge on Ingoldi.

"The Dark Crusade is a colossus--a giant," Kane told Orted. "But it is a helpless giant for all its hugeness and its strength--for it is a giant without weapons or armor. I can forge the weapons and armor your giant must have if it is to conquer.

"Give to me the gold and the power that I require," said Kane. "And I shall forge the Sword of Sataki."

"Who are you?" the Prophet whispered, and in his secret thoughts he wondered: What are you?

Gold and power. Orted Ak-Ceddi had both in abundance. To win yet more, he gave Kane whatever the stranger demanded.

Kane cast the gold to the four winds, and from lands beyond Shapeli men answered his call.

"From what I've seen of your army," Kane said, "I'll have to rely heavily on mercenary troops for cavalry. There's only so much one can do in terms of time and training. I rather hope some of them might make effective pikemen."

"They are the Children of Sataki!" stormed Orted dangerously.

"They are rabble," Kane replied. "I cannot forge a sword from mud and dung."

"Your mercenaries will not be true believers!" the Prophet thundered.

"They will be soldiers; that is sufficient," Kane told him. "As to their religion, they'll believe whatever you pay them to believe. A sword has no soul."

It was a critical point. Kane misread its implication.

Gold. Orted Ak-Ceddi had the plunder of all Shapeli to fill his coffers. He had made a fool's gamble and lost an army. Kane took his gold and bought him a second army--brighter and deadlier than the first, for Kane spent the gold wisely.

It was a game Kane knew well.

To the south, Sandotneri held the frontier behind a wall of armor and steel. Content with the slaughter of the Prophet's army, Jarvo felt no inclination to risk further punitive expeditions into the trackless forests of Shapeli. In his palace in Sandotneri, King Owrinos languished interminably upon his death bed--cancer gnawing like a worm. Court intrigue intensified as to his successor, and the hero of the marches of Shapeli cut a most impressive figure on parade. With such to concern him, Jarvo left the frontier to those of his officers who seemed least favorable to his cause, and wondered how Esketra could appear so infatuated with a shallow sycophant like Ridaze.

With only a half-hearted watch to see that no new army marched forth from Shapeli, the frontier guard little cared who might choose to ride into Shapeli. At first only lone horsemen and small bands of riders; then--as clandestine gold filled the campaign chests of the garrison commanders--no one challenged if an army rode by night.

Elsewhere, along Shapeli's western coast, ships crossed and recrossed the Inland Sea to the western mass of the Great Northern Continent. There, from the decadent kingdoms that had sprung up amidst the ruins of the vast Serranthonian Empire, certain men heeded the call of gold, looked to swords and battle gear, took passage for the forests of Shapeli.

Upon the northern and eastern coasts of this peninsular subcontinent beat the rolling breakers of the Eastern Sea. A thousand leagues across its azure waves lay the continental mass of Lartroxia, where men named this same expanse of water the Western Sea. Ships could and did cross this great span of ocean, but such crossings had grown less and less common as both of the northern supercontinents lapsed into centuries of barbarism. Kane had no need to cross an ocean for the men he sought.

Even within Shapeli, Kane found those who could be forged into the metal he required. Some among the Satakis--through native talent or rudimentary training--could handle weapons, sit a horse, and not endanger comrade more than enemy. Kane chose them front the rabble, armed them, trained them.

A general amnesty--proclaimed by Kane over Orted's objections--lured a scattering of half-starved ex-guardsmen out of hiding.

"They defied Sataki!" the Prophet exploded.

"They have since repented; be magnanimous," Kane said. "I need trained men for my officers."

A core of trained officers--professional soldiers--and about them a framework of veteran warriors. This was the key to Kane's ambitious design. From this core he could build an army, swelling its ranks from the Sataki masses--to such degree as the best of them could be trained.

With gold and power, it was only a factor of time.

Meanwhile the forges of Shapeli blackened the sky, as craftsmen worked day and night turning out the weapons and armor Kane demanded. Kane ransacked the whole of Shapeli to fill the stables at Ingoldi, lavished shiploads of gold to bring in the mounts he still required.

It was a formidable task. It would have been impossible without the thousands of mercenaries who answered Kane's summons.

To think of such men as knights or samurai would be inaccurate. While some claimed aristocratic lineage, in an age of shattered empire, and no dynasty of note in centuries--of uncounted petty kingdoms and principalities--such pretensions were a conceit. Nor were these landed gentry who owed allegiance to some feudal lord, although there were some with considerable holdings and private armies. It was an age of near anarchy, when a man might take whatever he could hold, and force of might overruled all laws temporal, spiritual, or natural. Long a bucolic backwater of city-states and agrarian villages, Shapeli had only rejoined its era.

The arms, armor, and horse of such a soldier represented a huge investment. The skill to use them effectively demanded years of training. Yet in an age of constant warfare, such professional soldiers could grow wealthy from selling their services, or from private endeavours of a less glorious nature.

Call them free companions or condottieri or mercenaries. They were a warrior class, without code or values other than each man's personal creed, owing allegiance to whatever cause paid well. Their ranks were open to any man who could claim the prerequisite weapons and accoutrements. Those who also had the necessary skills might, with luck, live long and eventful careers.

These were the men Kane summoned. Most came to him with their own arms and mounts; some only with their scars. They were an army that lacked only coherence to be ready to fight.

For the Satakis, it was a different story. Kane selected the most promising, turned them over to his veteran officers. He hoped that several months of training and drill might hammer them into acceptable light cavalry. As for the rest--perhaps a few worthwhile regiments of pikemen and foot soldiers. Incredibly, the Prophet's followers still numbered in the hundreds of thousands--Shapeli's forests had sheltered a population of some millions before Orted launched his Dark Crusade. The best of the Prophet's army had been thrown away against the Sandotneri charge. Kane supposed the dregs that remained might be dangerous enough to a cornered foe.

"They can hold a sword; they can fight," argued Orted Ak-Ceddi.

"They can stop a sword well enough, I trust," Kane sneered.

For months Kane drilled them on the parade ground at Ingoldi. With surgical precision he excised the useless, gave command to the best, organized and reorganized. The long hours of toil at last began to show results. Upon the steel core of his mercenary force, the mismatched components and raw material slowly welded together into a fighting unit. Under the guidance of veterans, the Sataki regiments took shape--a fusion of battle-hardened mercenaries and newly trained recruits from the Prophet's hordes.

Kane was, for the most part, not displeased with their progress. The Sword of Sataki made an impressive show, at drill or on parade. Kane knew the test of battle was yet to come, and that this was the only test that mattered. He was withal reasonably confident of his men.

Indeed, someone might have pointed out that the greater portion of Kane's officers were men who had served under Kane in Sandotneri. Doubtless, had Orted remarked upon this, Kane would have told him, and truthfully, that he needed officers whom he knew he could trust.

It was with some satisfaction that Kane turned from reviewing the day's cavalry drill, and leisurely rode back across the parade ground with several of his officers.

"The Sword of Sataki has been forged, I rather think," he remarked to his staff. "There remains only the task of honing it."

And blooding it, he told himself.

Despite the heavy rainfall in Shapeli, the tropic sun quickly dried out the packed earth. Through the thin dust lazily drifted the laughter of children at their play. Heedless of the riders' approach, the children played their game of kickball almost under their hooves. Shrieking gaily, they propelled the bounding objects across the hard clay.