Lesson of the Fire (55 page)

One damnen survived the initial rush and
attacked desperately, raking at the wizards with sharp claws. Eda
rushed to join the killing frenzy. Magic could not touch a damnen,
but her marsord was perfectly serviceable. Surprised and alone
against a hundred opponents, the damnen soon fell to a flurry of
spears and knives.

When it was done, the Mar hacked off damnen
heads and set about healing the wounded. They had only lost two
this time.

Just like in all the
stories about mapmaker expeditions in the Dead Swamps, except this
time, we’re the predators at the edge of vision,
Eda mused with a feral smile.

So far, Eda and her company of ten nonagons
had killed fifty damnens in raids and ambushes like these. In the
informal contest to take the most heads, her company was a long way
from first place, but she was marshaling a force of Flasten and
Domus wizards 10,000 strong, ranging from greens to cyans, and the
damnens had worked together much longer. By striking the damnen
slavers without warning from every angle at least dozen times a
day, they had reduced the Drakes’ march to a veritable crawl. Even
the mundane guerillas had made a few kills by emerging out of the
mud and hamstringing damnens before they even knew the Mar were
there, though the guerillas lacked the mobility of the nonagons and
couldn’t cover as much ground.

The only irritation was that the Mar still
did not have a good estimate of the damnens’ numbers.

The Mar presented the damnen corpses to her.
Two greens improvised a comedy using the freshly severed heads as
puppets. Eda shook her head in amazement.

“Let’s get back to camp,” she said. “Two
nonagons will take the severed heads and put them on spikes in the
damnens’ path. The rest of you have leave to forage for food.”

Eda called the myst and flickered across the
landscape until she reached her base of operations in the south of
the Duxy of Flasten. Other company captains waited for her.

“Bad luck,” one Domus lavender — Olvir
Bedaulich — spat. “Two of theirs and six of ours. If I didn’t know
any better, I’d think they knew we were coming.”

“One of ours, three of theirs. We’ve given
them a tough choice,” noted an unusually perceptive Domus green.
“They can stay close to their fellow damnens with the herd of
mundanes where we concentrate our raids, or they can keep their
distance to reduce the chance of being attacked while increasing
the chance that any raiders that find them will kill them.”

“Five of ours, eight of theirs. There is
safety in both numbers and obscurity, but it is almost impossible
to have both at the same time,” a Flasten auburn said, summarizing
her fellow captain’s analysis.

“Two of ours, one of theirs. They will
adjust their tactics,” warned a Flasten cyan. “Damnens are terribly
clever, and I am certain they recognize we do not know how many
they are. They will find some way to use that to their
advantage.”

A Flasten blue arrived late to their daily
meeting.

“You look troubled, Weard Entsen,” Eda said,
frowning. “What happened?”

“None of ours, one of theirs,” he said
automatically. All the captains had fallen into the habit of
providing a casualty count before addressing all other orders of
business. “But I bring troubling news. My company struck from the
rear today, and while we saw only one damnen, it looks like they
have left us a grisly gift of their own — eighty-six impaled and
elaborately eviscerated Mar men.”

Damnens are
herders,
Eda thought grimly.
Men are less valuable to them than
women.

“The same as the number of damnens we killed
yesterday,” Eda said softly. “They’re adjusting their tactics.”

“It could be the ploy of desperation,” the
same Flasten cyan said — Odveig Spitz, Eda recalled, was his name.
“Or they are trying to distract us from their intentions.”

Eda shook her head. “I’d say that’s a fair
guess, Weard Spitz. Wizards wear bright colors to frighten away
less courageous enemies, but their entire strategy does not hinge
on their cloaks. They cannot catch us, and we cannot see them — at
least not with magic.”

“They might be sending scouts farther afield
in search of our base of operations,” Weard Entsen suggested.

“Unlikely,” the observant Domus green —
Oysten Klarein — countered. “We can move our camp almost instantly.
We could be a hundred miles away before their scout returned.”

“Small scouting parties are more vulnerable
than larger bands,” Weard Spitz said. “Even with surprise, we
suffer far more casualties against fifty damnens than we do against
five.”

Eda chewed her lower lip, listening to the
discussion. “They might be trying to force us to meet them in the
field. The more damnens we kill in ambushes and raids, the more
innocent Mar they torture and kill in retaliation.”

“Then that is the last thing we should give
them,” Weard Spitz growled.

“I disagree,” Eda said. “That’s exactly what
we should give them — or, at least, that is what we should make
them think we are giving them. They don’t have a good count of our
numbers, either.”

“But why throw away troops on a pitched
battle with damnens?” Weard Bedaulich asked.

“Because we didn’t come here to kill
damnens,” Eda reminded him.

“A rescue,” Weard Klarein murmured. “Field
one or two thousand wizards to hold the damnens’ attention, and
while the battle is raging, the rest of the army snatches the
mundanes away from them.”

Weard Spitz snorted a laugh. “Sounds like we
are paying them back for Despar Palus. I cannot argue against that.
Once that thousand is engaged with the damnens, though, there is no
escape for them. It is a terrible sacrifice to ask a Mar to make.
After all, if the damnens win — and they probably will — some of
those wizards will be taken prisoner by the Drakes. Everyone knows
what damnens do to their captives.”

“I’ll lead the diversion force,” Eda said.
“I’d rather have volunteers than wizards who are only following
orders.”

“You’ll need naked eye recon to make sure
the plan is working,” Weard Klarein said. “My company will circle
around to see that they aren’t guarding their captives too closely
when the time comes. If it’s too dangerous for a rescue, we’ll try
to warn you before the battle is joined.”

“I will be with you, Weard Stormgul,” Weard
Spitz said, expression deadly serious. “I am not about to let a
Domus magocrat make me look like a coward in my home duxy.”

Other Flasten wizards voiced their
agreement, and several Domus wizards, not wanting to be shown up by
their old rivals, soon did the same.

Eda tried to appear calm in spite of the
deep terror threatening to strangle her.

Diplomatically, that was the right move.
Because I’m willing to die for their duxy, they will love the
Mardux a little more. I wanted to be on the winning side, Sven, and
so I will be, but I won’t be alive to see it.

* * *

Sven sailed through the Tempest, his mind
swirling with visions and memories. Living and dead Mar spoke to
him, whispering endless advice into his ears, and he had followed
none of it. His patrons appeared to offer dire pronouncements about
his failure.

How wrong I was about the Mass! How terribly
I underestimated Dinah and Domin! How badly I misinterpreted the
signs the gods gave me!

Then Sven heard a new voice in the murmurs
of the Tempest’s dark as Pondr told his story for the first time.
“Sven Takraf was born i’the wild’ress of Gunne, a secret child of
Marrish an’ Fraemauna. Seekin’ to spare her lover from the wrath of
his wife, Dinah, Fraemauna aban’oned her son. Seruvus, who sees
all, took pity on the babe, blessed the boy with his own memory an’
gave him to Pitt Gematsud to raise as his son.”

He knew my story before I told it to him. He
knew everything … up to Tortz. He did not know the lesson of the
fuel, that I am the fuel the Mar’s fire would feed on. And Katla …
she said, “Fire is pitiless.” The Mar will not be pitiless. I
brought Marrish’s gift of magic to the mundanes, I am the fuel
their fire consumes, and each will be fuel for the next.

“An’ Sven Takraf stepped forward an’
volunteered to pay Rustiford’s debt to Nightfire with his own life,
never thinkin’ of his own fate, but only that of his people.”

But is that wrong? Nightfire just said, “All
Marrishland will burn because of you.” He thinks I am the fire,
that our country is the fuel … He thinks it is the lesson of the
fire. Katla does too. The country cannot be consumed; the fire will
always burn.

I did lose my way. I tried to sacrifice
others to the gods as proof of my devotion, but it only proved my
arrogance. As long as other Mar are out there, as long as
Marrishland stands, I can still emerge victorious.

He remembered Dux Fieglin huddled at the
feet of Dinah, begging her to show mercy to his people.

Dinah has called me out, too, but she will
not bring me to my knees. If she lays me low, she will fall with
me.

Sven exited the Tempest and arrived in the
ruins of Tortz. The air was so thick with the odor of wetness and
slow decay that his nostrils flared.

Have I forgotten what it means to live in
the swamps and marshes?

Most of the buildings had vanished under
years of Marrishland’s winter and summer storms. The town wall was
little more than a broad hurdle, and even the adobe prison had
begun to return to the earth.

All things in Marrishland fade away. Nothing
we build ever lasts for long.

“I have been waiting for you,” Robert Wost
said, his red cloak seeming to glow in the morning mist. To one
side of him, Ari stood, watching. “You are too late, Mardux. Your
mundane rabble will be destroyed by your old friends, the
Protectorates. You cannot defeat me.”

Sven sent bolts of Energy at the red from
seven sides. Elements appeared and dissolved each bolt.

Robert laughed. “Did you really think it
would be that easy?” His cloak became a halo of flame.

It is not real. He excels at illusions.

“Your efforts have been futile. I will
swallow Marrishland, and there is nothing you can do to stop
me.”

A shell of Elements surrounded Sven,
blocking all but a few motes of the myst. Sven yanked the
metal-studded gloves from the back of his belt and yanked them onto
his hands. He summoned Elements with all the force he could
muster.

“Give up, Sven Takraf. You cannot break
through my shell.”

Sven dragged the tiny trickle of Elements to
his fingertips. The magic concealed in the metal studs came to
life, bursting forth and blending together to produce the most
powerful attack magic any wizard could wield — morutmanon. Each
finger sent forth a crackling bolt of raw magic built of each of
the eight magicks. Without the gloves, Sven could never have
gathered so much myst, much less control it.

Ari gaped and even Robert looked surprised
as the rivulets of killing power lanced toward them. The black
tendrils seared through Robert’s shell of Elements and passed
through the enchanter’s desperate defense like water through air,
wrapping itself around the two wizards. The two men evaporated at
the touch of the magic, their bodies becoming as insubstantial as
smoke.

“I am the hand of the gods!” Sven shouted at
the smoke, stripping off the spent Blosin gloves. “If I fall, you
will fall with me!”

“You are not my hand,” Robert’s voice said
from the cloud.

A creature with the head of an alligator
stepped out of the haze.

“Nor mine,” said Katla’s voice. A bald woman
clad in layers of mud came forward to stand next to the
alligator-headed creature.

“Domin? Dinah?” Sven’s voice was unsteady.
“But that’s impossible.”

“You have already received visits from nine
of the gods. Why should two more surprise you, Weard Takraf?”

Sven drew his marsord and let out a scream
of fury. “Marrishland is yours no longer!” He charged.

Chapter 45

“
The source of Mardux Takraf’s incredible
magical power introduced a fatal weakness. He became utterly
reliant upon the takraf mystalton in his Blosin gloves. His long
neglect of tordyn discipline meant he could barely wield three
magicks at once, even as a red. The same tactic his Duxy of Domus
army used to neutralize the gobbel invasion rendered him nearly as
helpless.”

— Weard Oda Kalidus,

The Origin of Nothing

Sven collapsed to the ground while Ari
looked on in shock. “How did you do that?”

Robert sneered and wiped his hands on his
cloak. “My triggered spell countered all the magic in his gloves
the instant he arrived. I am much more powerful than he is without
those.”

“He is a red, though. He still should have
put up some fight.”

“Perhaps it was teleportation sickness,”
Robert suggested with a shrug. He gestured to Sven’s twitching
form. “Regardless, he is now living the worst nightmare he is
capable of imagining — a situation with no choices and no hope.
Soon, he will surrender to terror and die, without ever waking from
that dream. Nothing any Mar can do will break the spell without
killing him.”

Ari frowned
slightly.
The Mardux must have been
suffering from extreme tor weariness, which means he has been using
a lot of magic recently. What is happening at Domus
Palus?

“Come, Ari, we have an envoy to bend to our
will.” Robert gestured, and Einar came out of the myst like an
obedient slave. When they returned to Leiben, a cyan waited for
them — one of Sven’s magocrats named Weard Asfrid Staute. She
looked up at them with eyes clouded by morutsen, and one side of
her face was a swollen mass of bruises.