Lesson of the Fire (35 page)

What happened? Where did they go?

From the northwest, shouts.

Oh, Marrish, will we have to keep a watch
all night of every man?

He suddenly felt anger rise
in him.
This is the Mardux’s battle. He
should be fighting it, not me. Too many Mar will die.

Then somehow I must save as many as I
can.

The revelation hit him like a bowl of hot
soup on an empty stomach.

Their general will not negotiate. Not yet.
We must ... What must we do?

The shouts to the north turned to cries of
victory again, followed by the sounds of battle to the west.

“Engulf them,” Horsa said finally. “Mark
them, and follow them. When we are regrouped, we will deal with
Flasten.”

* * *

It took about a span, but the two massive
Mar armies were soon thoroughly entangled with each other. They
were less than twenty miles south of Domus Palus. They were each
about nineteen thousand strong. They both had generals whose
knowledge of war stemmed from stories they had learned as children
and books they had read during their apprenticeships.

The Flasten army clumped, but Ragnar had
divided it into three main divisions. The first assault that
divided the army would not work again. He kept them maybe a mile
apart, drifting slowly east and west for supply reasons, and sent
forays of a hundred or so north to check the Domus army’s defenses.
They had reconnaissance stones now, but Ragnar was certain Domus’
were better.

In this teleport war, spreading out over
four thousand square miles now, it was a serious advantage. But
using the edge of his reconnaissance spells, he could even
triangulate Domus’ location while being more than fifteen miles
from them.

The Domus army was spread much more thinly.
There were nine obvious divisions, and each of those could break
down, and down again, to component groups of nine.

Nonagons: Four to attack,
two to defend, two to heal or rest, and one to move them
all.
Ragnar had seen enough of them to copy
them more efficiently.
Pentagons: Two
attack, one to heal, one to rest, one to move. Defense came from
healing.

But they were at a standoff. Ragnar not only
had to defeat this army, he had to take Domus Palus. Despite his
attempt to contact his father without heading back to Flasten
Palus, Ragnar had not received a reply. Every time he made plans to
move, he would barely have finished his preparations before a raid
would sneak into his camp.

These were particularly vexing. Nothing he
had read gave him a response against the tactics the Domus army
used.

No more than thirty at a time would appear a
few yards into his camp, blast his wizards in the throat, eyes and
mouth with Energy, then jump a few hundred yards deeper in. They
would not retreat. Not until they had gone all the way through his
men and out the other side. And then come back. His weards were
hard-pressed to do much of anything during the ten or so seconds
the enemy was among them.

This didn’t happen just one invasion at a
time. It would happen two or three at a time and then stop.

What game are you
playing?
He cursed the leader of the Domus
army. They had good reconnaissance. He could get nine miles out of
his best wizard, and if Ragnar lost that weard, he’d be lucky to
find one who could manage six miles.

The good news was that only one wizard had
died over the last four days of these tactics, and that was because
he had passed out in a puddle. No matter how many throats were
melted shut, there were always ten more wizards prepared to heal
them. More would die from konig worms than would die from these
magical tactics. That was certain.

Now Ragnar thought
strategy, even as another raid brought screams from the west.
Vaguely, he ordered a counterstrike.
Someone will break through.

I should march on the Domus army.

He would have to eventually. Right now, he
barely knew where they were. He could be surrounded.

I should teleport whoever I can into Domus
Palus, force the Domus general to divide his loyalties.

And split them up even more? He would be as
a bootless mapmaker heading for the Fens of Reur in a striped cloak
carrying only a candle.

He grabbed his marsord and a whetstone and
started polishing it. The blade was nicked in places, dulled in
others.

Ragnar wore a marsord because he was a
leader. He had spent most of his life studying books by foreign
generals who knew the strategy and tactics of their lands. He had
trained himself to win this war. Or any war. A war against men or
Drakes. He had studied the works of all the great Mar generals. He
knew about ravit and gobbel tactics.

He knew how to lead men. He understood what
he had to do. And despite that, many of his men had run off when
they were attacked by the overpowering numbers of Domus troops.
Still, in the thick of a fight, they listened and obeyed.
Casualties were ridiculously low.

He put the sharpened
marsord down.
I need to regain the
advantage. I need Domus to come when I call, to move where I tell
it to.
He looked at his sword.
What are the resources in this war.

The stone rasped against
the sword. In terms of numbers, the two armies were nearly the same
size. As for weapons, Ragnar knew the Domus army could beat him in
Mobility and Knowledge, but he had an edge in Vitality and
Power.
They can dodge, but we can
heal.

He drew an oiled rag from his belt and wiped
at the blade.

We need an edge,
he thought, staring at the blade.
Magic tires us out; if we could use less, we
could heal more. If everyone had a marsord …

Suddenly he grinned.

* * *

The latest report to Horsa was just as empty
of promise as the previous thirty. No Flasten weards killed. For
every one whose flesh was seared to the bone with energy, a dozen
more jumped to save him.

Ragnar has that edge:
Vitality. But we have Knowledge.
Horsa’s
reconnaissance stones saw for five miles more than his opponents’,
the yellow was sure of it.

His advisers thought they could keep this
up. Four or five nonagons cutting through the Flasten army would
wear them down. Horsa knew the opposite was true. Domus would be
worn through first.

We have been peppering him
with small strikes,
Horsa thought as his
generals babbled on.
A hammer blow now
might break him. And … if we were to disappear …

He looked up, and the lavenders grew
silent.

* * *

Ragnar was barely awake before he heard the
shouts. He leapt from his tent in his boots and undershorts,
marsord in his hand to strike down the flood that had descended on
them.

This time they hadn’t come in small
groups.

This time the whole army had come.

But Ragnar had prepared his men, and instead
of gathering myst, they all had spears encased in Power. The wet
wood would have bent without, and dozens of Domus wizards,
expecting hesitation as a magical assault was summoned, were
speared where they stood. Many immediately got back up as healers
worked, but death claimed dozens.

A few minutes later, no Domus wizards
remained in Ragnar’s camp, and Ragnar called for his generals.
Combining their powers, they reconned. The Domus army now
surrounded them — a thousand at every point in the compass and
every point in between. And their line was constricting on Ragnar’s
army

The screams came again as the Domus army
pounced through them, but this time it was with shields of Elements
and Power. One minute, Ragnar’s army stood, prepared, in silence.
The next, there were twice as many weards. The spears broke in the
hands of the Mar who held them. The silence shattered. Domus and
Flasten alike sundered the ground and air with Energy and
Power.

This time, when the Domus army retreated,
several hundred Mar, led by ambitious ambers, followed them.

Ragnar, marsord wet with Mar blood,
reconned. His men had followed the Domus men out and were losing
ground on them.

Then the nineteen thousand Domus weards
fragmented, grew hazy and vanished.

Ragnar and his generals glared at their
reconnaissance stone for a minute. One of the men kicked the
thing.

“Use everything you have got,” Ragnar told
them. The stone remained blank.

“Where in Domin’s domain did they go?”

Ragnar scratched his
beard.
They might be out of range. But
they could not have move that fast.

He shook his head. “They must have some way
of clouding this. We will deal with it later. Right now we need to
get our stragglers back.”

“They could have split up.”

“Individuals? We could see their general
before.”

“Resonation,” a lavender said. “The
reconnaissance has always been hazy around the edges. It relies on
them being near each other.”

Ragnar toyed with this. Then it hit him. “He
will have to protect Domus. So we divide. Three armies, the outside
two carve out like this.” He cupped his hands and tapped his
fingers together. “We will meet at Domus Palus. Do not let a single
Domus wizard escape you.”

“How many will there be?”

“Thousands. And hundreds of traps. But in
very small groups.”

* * *

The blood of the Mar knew battles. Thousands
of years of history had been fraught with them. They lived in a
realm more populated by Drakes than Mar, and both needed to live.
Both wanted the space, the solid ground and the wild rice. They
fought over any exposed rock, because that meant minerals — iron
and copper, or maybe even gold. A new outcropping exposed by the
grinding of water and earth could start a decades-long feud. But
now their blood sang with war.

One by one, the Domus wizards altered their
cloaks to be camouflaged — the colored cloaks were wise in times of
peace, but they only made you an easier target for ambushes and
programmed traps. Though a young deer was dappled to hide it from
predators, an older deer did not glow in the dark to draw enemies
to it.

The wizards reverted to mundane colors —
black and dark green. They fashioned spears from hardwoods.
Nine-man squads, nonagons, so equipped could conserve magic. They
recalled how to move silently, to climb trees and drop down on
their enemies. They devised a nonverbal communication. They learned
and practiced Drake tactics against their fellow Mar.

Mar had long ago mastered the art of
defending a position, for they had needed it to survive the nearly
constant Drake raids. The Drakes, however, had perfected several
methods of fighting in the swamps, moors and marshes. Away from the
walls of a town, even a small army of wizards was at a disadvantage
against the Drakes.

The Flasten army was slower to learn. Horsa
had to admit that Flasten had reacted to Domus from the first
encounter on. By the time Flasten learned, it neared Domus in
numbers, and the war had spread out over a hundred thousand square
miles.

And the war progressed, Domus squads
fighting pairs of Flasten pentagons. Fight, run, heal — and forage.
The land suffered more than anything. This patch of Marrishland,
less than five percent of its total area, would not recover for
many years. Power had uprooted thousands of plants in attempts to
stop wizards from teleporting. Energy had dried out patches of mud
and, in some rare cases, burned the mud to char.

Horsa glanced over the landscape after a
battle where his three nonagons had pushed back four pentagons with
no casualties.

Cedar, forgive us for our damage to the
land. I vow if I survive this war to heal and preserve this
battlefield as a memorial to the follies of the Mar during the
great Teleport War.

Sven, I pray your cause is worthy of this
sacrifice.

Chapter 29

“
Tryggvi Fochs drew his sword calmly as
the eight damnens moved forward, the claws on their hands
unsheathed. Tryggvi spoke to them in their native tongue. ‘My magic
cannot harm you, and my skill is no match for your numbers, but the
first three who come within my marsord’s reach are dead.’ He ran a
thumb along the blade. ‘So, which three want to die?’ The Drakes
hesitated. Tryggvi took a step forward, face relaxed. The damnens
fled.”

— Weard Eira Helderza,

The Tryggvi Fochs Saga

When Einar was finished, Leiben was a
fortress to rival even the Bastion of Pidel Palus. The ground had
long since been raised above the level of the surrounding moorland,
and now the earthen wall surrounding the town was a solid barrier
of clay bricks baked with Energy. To deter even hightel, Einar had
warded virtually every foot of the town with magical traps that
would make short work of any wizard suffering even a mild case of
teleportation sickness.

Einar left a few small pockets in strategic
locations throughout the town where no traps lay in wait. In the
thick fog of gathered myst that covered Leiben and the surrounding
landscape, it would be next to impossible to find them. He had
taken pains to memorize the location of each and only moved from
one to another by means of teleportation or by surrounding himself
in a strong sphere of Elements to prevent the traps from harming
him.

What had once been an otherwise unremarkable
living room in a small house was now Einar’s recon chamber and last
refuge. He examined the recon stone and carefully avoided touching
it. Anyone wearing red who did touch it would trigger four
simultaneous applications of morutmanon on everyone in the town.
And no one would suspect the trap, because the stone was already a
font of used magic.