Healer's Ruin (12 page)

I'm not so different to them,
he thought glumly.

But the thought roused in him a fresh contempt for violence and brutality. What purpose did it serve, all this fighting? It massaged the ego of the Ten Plains King. The healer's own people, the Rovann, would be no better off with Riln conquered than they had been before the invasion. As a matter of fact, they would be worse off, because many of their finest and strongest would have died in the conquering of the northern kingdom. Rovann parents would be mourning their dead sons and daughters while the King adjusted his world map and turned his roving, tireless eyes to new projects.

And when the whole world is his, what will he do then?

Chalos already felt sure of the answer. The Ten Plains King was a ruthless accumulator of wealth and power. He thrived on acquisition and the flexing of his powerful imperial muscle. What would he do, this monarch who could do nothing but destroy, when there was nothing in existence that was not under his banner?

The answer was there, in the annals of history, in the legends of tyrants long dead. Men who had built vast empires, and having no means to extend them, always turned on their own people next, manufacturing dissent in order to provide an excuse to brutalise and exploit. The Ten Plains King was cut from the same cloth, Chalos knew. He would turn on his own champions, as he had turned on Tankanis and Jolm, and his citizens and subjects would become serfs and slaves. On and on he would go, grinding his people down, until somebody stopped him, or death claimed him. But there was no guarantee that a rare beast like the Ten Plains King could be brought low by mere mortality. He had lived for hundreds of years. He might outlive all other life in the world.

And we would watch the world wither around him, like dogs starving at the heels of their master. We would watch and do nothing, because we think obedience an end in itself. Duty... is there any world more foul?

Perhaps it was courage, or maybe despair had finally robbed him of all concern for his own welfare, but Chalos found himself suddenly unafraid. He walked into the midst of the Tarukadul and seized the girl. She looked at him with surprise and then promptly drove her knee into his groin. Fortunately for Chalos, she was dazed and weak, and missed the spot, her kneecap thumping his thigh. It still hurt, but he kept hold of her. Turning his attention to the Krune, he twisted his face into a snarl.

'When I give you an order, I expect it followed!'

'Who are you to order us around, slinger?' the leader of the Tarukadul said, clenching his fists. His grin was sadistic. This was precisely what he had wanted. Escalation, and an excuse to crack a skull open.

I played into his hands,
Chalos realised.
But so what? I'm probably going to die on these plain anyway. Does it matter whether it's at the mercy of the enemy, or my own allies?

'I'm the one that will be setting your bones and healing your wounds when your superiors have chastised you for insubordination,' Chalos said. 'But maybe I'll miss a few fractures and cuts, eh? Leave you with a few scars, perhaps?' The Tarukadul were exchanging nervous glances. 'Is that what your men want?'

The Tarukadul leader did something unexpected then. He dropped his head and shuffled his feet. A meek sound came from his throat.

'We are sorry, healer,' he said.

With horror Chalos saw that he had become part of the same machine that had been victimising and humiliating the half-castes their whole miserable lives. They truly had been broken to the point where a mere Rovann, half their size and unarmed, was able to force a mob of them to back down with nothing more than a half-hearted threat. The healer felt a pang of guilt.

'That's alright,' he said, all steel gone from his voice. 'Look, we're all on the same side. I'm no better than you. I just don't like to see prisoners mistreated.' He sought the Krune's gaze. 'Friends?'

The leader of the Tarukadul straightened, a relieved look on his face. He looked to the others. They shrugged. He looked back at Chalos.

'Yes, healer. Friends.'

Chalos relaxed his grip on the girl and stepped away from her, making a placating gesture with his hands.

'It's alright,' he said. 'You won't be hurt anymore.'

She peered at him suspiciously and then clutched at her rags, tugging them closer to cover her small breasts. She pressed her white thighs together so firmly that her legs trembled.

'Oh no!' Chalos said. 'No, I don't want anything from you! I'm just trying to help!'

Then he froze. There was movement between them and the stubborn darkness of the Dallian Woodland. A line of glinting shadows on long, straight legs. For a moment he didn't know what he was looking at, but then realisation dawned.

Agryce!
The Tarukaveri lieutenant's Black Talon warriors, mounted on armoured shadamar mounts. Lined up, as if to attack.

'No - '

One word was all the healer managed. The storm of crossbow bolts practically cut the Tarukadul in half. The Riln girl was whipped around by a bolt that took her in the shoulder. She fell against Chalos, dragging him to the ground.

So, Agryce and the Duke had made their play. They meant to ensure Jolm's death in the field, even if it meant butchering their fellow Krune. The Tarukaveri line let loose a howl of venom and the ground began to tremble. They were charging.

Chalos, acting on impulse, tore the bolt free from the girl. A jet of blood splashed his face, making him blink furiously. Jamming his hands to the gush of dark fluid, he found his mirror and focused his energy. The girl clawed at his hands.

'Let me die, invader bastard!' she begged. 'Let me die!'

With a grunt he pushed her hands away and poured more energy into the wound. He could hear her heart beating, and behind it, the growing beat of hooves. Death was approaching as life was restored. He pulled his hands away and looked down, rolling the girl onto her front to inspect the entry wound. Satisfied that she was healed, he clasped her chin in both hands and leaned towards her.

'I know you hate me,' he said, 'but that doesn't matter now. These men that are coming will kill everything – you, me, the other invaders – without prejudice. You're covered in blood. Find a ditch and lie in it until they've passed. With luck, they'll think you're already dead.'

He saw her expression of puzzlement turn to one of understanding and the girl stopped struggling.

'One mercy in all this slaughter?' she said. 'You are pathetic, southerner.'

'That's a fair assessment,' he admitted. 'Please, go now.'

He watched her scramble away, throwing herself out of view in a dip in the earth between two low formations of white rock. Then he glanced to the Tarukadul, seeing their armoured bulk strewn across the ground, their bodies speared through with thick barbed shafts. Dead, all of them, he guessed. Beyond saving.
A healer, yes, but not a god... resurrection requires more power than I could ever pull from the world of magic. The dead are outside my jurisdiction.

The front line of Agryce's Black Talon was surging forward, a bustling row of purple muscle shrouded in black Baldaw mesh, blades glinting. The armoured skulls of the shadamar mounts were like the bosses of greatshields. For a moment, time seemed to slow as Chalos realised that there was nowhere he could flee too. He could not outrun the shadamar. He could not survive the blades. He stood there like a slack-jawed idiot.

A moment later he could feel the heat of the animals and hear the hissing breath of the riders. His bowels loosened and warmth spread down his leg. His knees buckled.

Then he was up in the air, twisting away, a burning pain in his left shoulder. A sword swung at his legs, missing his flailing foot by a hair's breadth. All Chalos could do was gape in surprise as he watched the force pass beneath him.

Mysa had him by the shoulder and was dragging him through the air. They passed over a panicked mob of sherdlings that was trapped in the path of the oncoming Tarukaveri, paralysed with indecision as to which way to flee. Then Chalos was soaring over open ground, the earth chewed up with divots and the impressions of heavy boots, before ending his rapid flight at the eastern fringe of the Tarukataru Black Talon line. Chalos barely had time to note that the Riln were in disarray here, their ranks disintegrating beneath the assault of Dolga's Gilt Plates and fierce black-clad Krune under the Corporal's command, before Mysa's strength finally failed her and they plummeted.

Landing roughly, Chalos blacked out for a moment. When he came to, Mysa was staggering about, flexing her wings infront of him. The fighting was close. He could smell the sweat and the blood and the air was crammed with the punishing noise of sword on shield, boot on earth, bones breaking under blows, roars that turned into screams.

'Mysa!' he gasped. 'You saved me!'

The bird cocked her head.

'Goodness, you are heavy,' she groaned.

He inspected his shoulder. His clothing was in tatters and there were deep gouges in the flesh beneath, very dark blood building up in the triangular incisions. The wounds oozed as he prodded the skin.

He began to reach back into the world of magic to repair the damage the crow's claws had done.

'Not here, Chalos!' Mysa said with urgency as if reading his mind. 'Agryce will soon be upon us!'

Turning southward he saw, down a slight decline, the line of mounted Tarukaveri Black Talon heading for them. They crashed through the sherdlings with complete disinterest, trampling them unceremoniously.

'The Corporal!' Mysa said. 'You have to warn the Corporal!'

For a second, Chalos wondered how anyone could miss a force that big charging into its rear. But then he saw the battle itself from a decent vantage point. Mysa had deposited him on a small hillock littered with small white stones like grave markers, and he could now see the swarm of Riln warriors in their leather armour and flat tin helms as well as the larger shapes of the Krune carving them asunder. He could also see the giant Dauwarks thundering into the enemy line, bludgeoning five at a time with their enormous weapons as blades and arrows bounced off their shining armour. And, to the west, on the opposite end of the line, he saw flashes of crimson and gouts of smoke, followed by the sounds of mass panic, as Samine harried the Riln with conjured flames.

Chalos rose with a groan, pulling a kerchief from a pocket and pressing it to his ravaged shoulder. He pointed westward to the middle of the Tarukataru line.

'Mysa, find Jolm. Make sure he knows Agryce is coming.'

'How? He can't hear me! All are deaf to me but you!'

'Peck at his back, drop some guano on his helmet, anything!' Chalos said. 'Just make him turn around and see!'

As the bird nodded and took flight, Chalos took a deep breath and then sprinted for the battle. Not being a trained soldier, it was counter-intuitive for him to run towards the sound of war but he pushed the voice of warning from his mind. As he closed in on the massed ranks of Krune he began to stumble on the dead. The corpses were mostly Riln, pressed into the mud, their bodies pulverised by blow and boot. There were a few Krune there too, but not many. Clearly Jolm's warriors had hit the Riln line hard, slaughtered scores and then pushed forward, stamping on the dead as they forced the enemy back.

'Corporal!' the healer yelled to little effect, his reedy Rovann voice not suited to booming above the din of war. He reached up and slapped a Black Talon on his armoured shoulder. The Baldaw steel, glistening as it always did with its strange innate oils, was ice-cold under his palm. 'Soldier! I need to speak to the Corporal!'

A purple face, contorted in bloodlust, spun round, the eyes roving downward to find him.

'Rovann! Your healing is not needed! We are fine here!'

'Look behind you!' Chalos howled. The soldier turned and his eyes grew wide. Agryce's Tarukaveri were still too far for the noise of their shadamar hooves to pierce through the sound of the battle but they were nevertheless closing the distance at a furious pace.

'Doggosh be damned!' the Krune warrior barked before sticking his bloody sword in the air and hollering with all his might. 'Betrayal! Betrayal! Look to the south, comrades!'

Chalos staggered back as the whole eastern edge of the line quivered.
Like a single organism... all these fighting men have sacrificed their individuality,
he noted.
They are just arms and legs of the same great warrior.
Once again, the healer realised how little he had in common with professional soldiers like the men of the Black Talon. Their dedication to the cause of war and the self-negation it demanded both impressed and appalled him.

Black-helmeted heads were swivelling as the back line turned aghast to face the oncoming Tarukaveri. Shields went up and curses emerged from snarling lips. Chalos backed away nervously, not knowing where to go. A voice boomed above everything, a voice he immediately recognised as belonging to the Corporal. It seemed to hold the Krune in place by sheer volume, grasping their spirits in an vise.

'Rearguard! Switch and hold!'

Chalos was grabbed roughly by the shoulder – his wounded one – and yanked into the midst of the Krune. His eyes flicked up to see the Corporal grinning malevolently down at him.

'So little Rovann, you find yourself in the midst of battle at last! Fun, no?'