The Dark Glory War (34 page)

Nay handled it with silence or blushed smiles. Leigh, as he recovered, accepted praise with wit and bluster, belittling what he had done by exaggerating the circumstances, entertaining all and impressing them with his rakehell indifference to what he had endured. I felt very uneasy with it all, but also very proud of what we’d done. I thanked well-wishers and tried to escape, but I’ll admit to enjoying seeing eyes widen as I related some of our adventures. Hearing the praises of others can be seductive, and while I didn’t seek them out, I didn’t shrink overmuch from them when they were offered.

The half-dozen men in our boat, drawn in pairs from Oriosan, Alcidese, and Okrans soldiery, foolishly looked to Leigh and me for leadership. I deferred to Seethe and convinced Leigh to do so as well, since she had a century of experience over either of us. Leigh raised an eyebrow at my suggestion, then nodded and winked, clearly assuming I wanted to impress Seethe with my trust in her judgment because I was sweet on her.

We landed in the early evening in a small sandy cove that had a well-worn trail leading back into a forest that all but reached the water’s edge. Up over a small ridge, we came down into a marsh strewn with cattails, sawgrass, and fallen trees. We tried to skirt it, and one of the Gyrkyme flew out to see if she could find a path for us to cross. We were eventually able to get to the other side by moving along logs to little islands, leaping boggy puddles, and wading through reeking water.

Heading a bit west we did find signs of a path that would take us back through the swamp without getting us too wet. It matched up with a meandering path that passed below the ridge of the hills. We likely would have headed out along it save that Nay saw a small cluster ofmetholanth trees and decided to harvest some leaves. He found leaves stripped from a couple of other branches and a footprint leading further west, which brought him to a narrow game trail that shadowed the larger footpath, but on the other slope of the hill.

We took the game trail and headed north. We moved quietly, with Seethe in the front, since she could see in the dark. Leigh came behind her, then me and Nay, with the other men strung out behind and the Gyrkyme at the back. While the dense foliage prevented them from taking to the air, they likewise could see in the dark, and having that in a rearguard is rather nice at night.

Suddenly, ahead of us, something sounded with a faint pop, then Seethe spun and went down with an arrow quivering in her. Temmer swept from Leigh’s hilt. The blade blazed like a torch as he dashed forward. He leaped over Seethe, then swung his sword down and around in a great arc that sliced through a sapling’s bole as if it were nothing more than a jackstraw. The tree crashed and something struggled in its branches. Leigh’s blade rose and fell again, and the struggling ceased while he sped on.

I dropped to a knee beside Seethe. The arrow had taken her through the meat of her upper left arm. She hissed in pain, but grabbed my jerkin and propelled me in Leigh’s direction. “Go after him. Go! All of you, go!”

I upped and sprinted after him, passing close on Nay’s heels. Cloven branches and dying men littered Leigh’s trail. A couple of the men had their faces or stomachs slashed, but more and more of them were facedown with split spines or crushed skulls. That they had been struck down while running didn’t wring any sympathy from me. They laid an ambush for us and it went wrong, so they got all they deserved.

Over a ridge and down a thickly forested hillside we raced. I smelled smoke well before I saw fire. Running full out I clipped a tree with my shoulder. That spun me about and sent me crashing through a bush which caught at my ankles. I flopped on my face at the edge of a clearing. At its center burned a bonfire and in its light I could see Leigh.

Temmer’s blaze rivaled that of the fire, splashing tall shadows against tent and tree, then hacking them in twain. Leigh was magnificent, his body taut, his every move precise and exact. He’d parry a lunge low, then come up with a cut that opened a man from groin to breastbone. A quick sidestep would dodge an overhand blow, then he’d draw Temmer along the man’s belly. Sliding it free, he’d spin, duck a head-high slash, then hamstring the man rushing past. As pain arched the man’s back, Temmer would cleave head from shoulders.

Leigh spun once again, his shining blade raised high, the light in his eyes flickering with the fire.

“Leigh, no!” I scrambled to my feet and ran at him. “No, Leigh!”

Temmer fell quickly, as if sped by my shout. No hesitation, no shifting of its deadly arc. It fell true and straight and strong, chopping effortlessly through collarbone and breast, with a wounded heart pulsing blood up over the golden blade’s length.

A terrified child, whose mother now lay dying before her, looked up at Leigh with huge eyes and began to cry.

Temmer came up again, which was when my diving tackle caught Leigh at the knees. I gathered his ankles to my chest, but lost my grip as we hit the ground. Leigh spun to his feet and leveled Temmer at me. Fury contorted his face and he snarled at me in a tongue so ancient it made my flesh crawl. Temmer aimed itself at my eyes and Leigh began a lunge.

Nay dropped his maul over Leigh’s head and shoulders, then hauled back and crushed the smaller man against his broad chest. Nay arched his back, hauling Leigh from his feet. Leigh tried to kick both heels back into Nay’s legs, but Nay had spread them. Closing his legs again, he caught Leigh’s ankles, then twisted and fell on his side. Nay rolled right, pinning Leigh beneath him and I stepped on Leigh’s right wrist, trapping Temmer.

Leigh’s hand opened and the sword rolled from his grip. Nay waited a moment or two, then relaxed his grip and kicked the sword away. “What did he … Why?”

One of the Okrans soldiers toed the woman’s body onto her back. “She had a knife.”

He told it truly, she did have a knife. A short-bladed, dull knife that still had a bit of a dirty peel from a forest tuber caught near the wooden grip. A short ways away lay a pile of peels, a pot, and more roots to be prepared for boiling. Judging from the state of the tubers she’d already tossed in the pot, her knife couldn’t have so much as creased Leigh’s leathers, much less hurt him.

I looked from Leigh’s unconscious form to Nay seated on Leigh’s back. “She had a knife. She was the enemy.”

Nay shook his head. “Leigh couldn’t have seen her as a threat.”

“No, Leigh couldn’t.” I toed Temmer. “But the man who wields this blade isn’t Leigh. I don’t know who or what he is, but I hope to all the gods he’s not destroyed our friend.”

What we learned from our scouting mission matched what the other parties found out. Chytrine’s armies had come south through the pass in the Boreal Mountains making straight for Fortress Draconis. More troops filtered through the pass on a daily basis and some of them got turned around. The men who had attacked us preyed on anyone moving through the area—Aurolani, men, it didn’t matter to them what they hit.

The band we’d captured were mostly women and children. While Leigh’s attack on that woman was enough to cow anyone, most of them didn’t give any sign they cared. What they’d seen, the sort of existence they lived, had long since snuffed any sense of life. They seemed genuinely surprised that we buried the dead; I had the impression that had we left them alone, meat would have joined the roots in their pots.

The rumors our scouts picked up did paint a nasty picture of the forces besieging Fortress Draconis. The armies that had headed west and hit Okrannel were composed mostly of vylaens, gibberers, a handful of renegade elves, and a few temeryces. The emphasis seemed to be on mobility and speed. While plenty of vylaens and gibberers filled the armies traveling south, drearbeasts, hoargouns, and enslaved men supplemented those armies.

Drearbeasts and hoargouns I only knew from legend. Drearbeasts most resembled bears and lived on the icefields north of the Boreal Mountains. They were supposed to be huge, have long, saberlike fangs and white coats decorated with light blue striping. One rumor had an urZrethisullanciri riding in a war chariot drawn by drearbeasts, but I doubted that since they didn’t sound like draft animals to me. Still it did sound as if these creatures made up for in strength what they lacked in speed, and it didn’t make me at all confident to hear that they preyed on temeryces by preference.

Hoargoun is the word in the Aurolani tongue applied to glacier giants. Some folks said they were made of ice, but I gathered they said that because the hulking creatures had white hair and beards and pale skin. They stood two or three times as tall as a man and had massive feet to allow them to walk across snow without sinking. They were said to favor clubs, much as Nay did, which left me with an image of a creature towering up over me, wielding the iron-bound trunk of an oak tree.

Not an image that lets one sleep without shivering awake in the wee hours of the night.

To make things worse, one of the hoargoun was supposed to be asullanciri. Those who saw it said they knew what it was because its flesh was black, though beard, hair, and eyes still remained white. Even now, years later, the very thought of a giantsullanciri sends shivers down my spine.

Arcanslataconsultation with Dothan Cavarre, Draconis Baron, produced a simple plan that our scouting runs indicated we should be able to accomplish to great effect—and with little risk to ourselves. We grounded our main force northwest of the peninsula, about ten miles west of the Durgrue River. Aurolani troops heading south tended to pass east of it, moving in long columns through the forests that led to the plains surrounding Fortress Draconis. According to the scouts Cavarre had operating in the area, the columns moved through the forests without fear and were ripe for an attack.

The other bit of trouble he had planned for the Aurolani host was something he’d been saving for the right time. The Durgrue River had once flowed into a saltmarsh to the northwest of Fortress Draconis, but after the last invasion from the north, the marsh had been drained and dikes had been raised to hold back both the sea and river floods. He already had urZrethi sappers in place and they’d prepared deep tunnels that would flood the reclaimed land by diverting the river into it. Our attack would force the Aurolani generals to shift troops to the lowlands to cut us off from the fortress, then he’d be able to flood it and catch them.

We landed 3,500 troops at the appointed place and hooked up with the Draconis scouts—elves from Croquellyn and Harquellyn—while our ships sailed south to harry the blockade. We only had a hundred and twenty cavalry, which Prince Augustus formed up into two battalions and used as a screening force for our northern flank. Though the elves—both those who had been with us and the new ones—refused to even acknowledge their existence, the half-dozen Gyrkyme scouted ahead for us. The rest of the force divided itself up into companies based on nationality, with the remnants like Leigh, Nay, Seethe, Faryaah-Tse Kimp, and myself serving in Lord Norrington’s command company.

In my comments about the ambush laid for us by the Ghost Marcher bandits, I may have implied that an ambush is a craven act. I think, in their case, it was—because they were only concerned with banditry. Their objective was to slaughter us for their personal gain. They attacked us with the zeal a prospector might employ to attack the earth when he hopes to uncover gold or gems.

The ambush we laid for the Aurolani was far from an act of cowardice, though, and I don’t think I’m being hypocritical in saying that. Our aim was to destroy a force that was going to slaughter our comrades in Fortress Draconis. We meant for the Aurolani troops to disappear in a manner that would sow consternation among those in the siege force. What we would do could never be considered honorable in any mythic sense—bards would not sing of details, but of our results.

What we would do was what was required of us.

For the ambush we selected a stretch of road that ran fairiv level through the forest. Our site came just beyond a valley which would have been a perfect location for an ambush, and which would have had the Aurolani troops on edge. Their relief on passing that point without an attack would make them relax, and prime them for our attack. The hills making up the western side of the valley still crowded the road on one side, but on the other the trickle of a stream ran through a shallow ravine with a hill further on, maybe twenty yards from the road. The trees in the area were such that only the first ten yards of that hill could be seen from the roadway, so anyone waiting on the crest would be invisible.

Lord Norrington arrayed his forces beautifully. The Okrans guards he placed on the hilltop, armed with spear, ax, and sword. To the south on either side he hid Oriosan and Alcidese warriors. On the western hill he placed his archers, so they could shoot down on the Aurolani troops. Prince Augustus kept his horsemen back from the road in a clearing to the west. When the ambush happened they would swing around and down to charge through any Aurolani forces that sought to retreat to the north. Other companies would cut the road to the north and prevent any other forces from catching up with the stricken group.

I had my place with the archers and crossbowmen, which kept me close to Lord Norrington since his signal to us would begin the ambush. Leigh and Nay and Seethe, along with a company of Oriosans, stood with us to keep the Aurolani forces away from the archers. It wasn’t that we couldn’t fight in our own right, but our shots picking out targets on the road would be more useful than our trading swordstrokes with gibberers on the hillside.

Seethe stood near me, her sword in hand. The arrow she’d taken the day before had been pulled from her muscles easily enough and I’d returned the favor of stitching her flesh shut. I wasn’t as skilled at it as she was, but I did my best because I didn’t want scars marring her smooth skin.

Nay stood near Leigh, his maul resting on his right shoulder. Leigh had not yet drawn Temmer; instead, a crossbow hung from his right hand. Still, his left hand did rest on the sword’s hilt. Back on board theInvictus, Leigh had apologized to me and thanked both Nay and me for holding him back. He stared into space, reaching a hand out, as if he could brush away the tears on the little girl’s face. “What I almost did …” he breathed over and over. “Never again.”