The Prince of Shadow (46 page)

“Habiba's spies have seen Markko following, and he is traveling fast.”

“And we still move as if we were on parade?”

“You have heard the proverb, ‘to the swift go the spoils'?”

Llesho nodded. That was the point, wasn't it?

“It isn't always true.” Master Den smiled, the kind that twinkled in his eyes as well as tilting his mouth. “Did I ever tell you the story about the falcon and the turtle?”

Habiba called a halt at noon to rest the horses and feed the troops on cold rations at their stations. During the pause, Master Jaks appeared on a large battle steed with armor plates attached to its chest and withers. Jaks tried to make light of his appearance at the middle of the line, but his eyes remained watchful and grim. When the line moved again, he fell into place next to Llesho, offering the defense of his person on the exposed flank. Master Den took the more defended side, walking at the head of Llesho's smaller horse with a pace that never faltered. Stipes had joined Bixei guarding their rear. Kaydu, with Little Brother peering nervously out of the pack where he'd tucked himself to hide, rode at the head of Llesho's guard, Hmishi and Lling to either side of her.

“How long?” Llesho asked Master Den. He didn't need to explain himself. The question was obvious, and Den did not pretend to misunderstand.

“Soon.” His glance flicked to Master Jaks, who nodded agreement.

The shadow of a low-flying bird passed over them, and Master Jaks amended his answer: “Now.”

Calls passed through the line as sergeants brought their squads to a halt and gave the command for battle formation. Kaydu glanced at Master Jaks, who directed the formation of a circle of pikemen around Llesho's squad. He called for archers to take their positions inside the circle, prepared to shoot over the shoulders of the pikemen, ranged a double line here, and here, where he expected the greatest pressure from Markko's attack. Llesho's own guard set themselves at the fore of the line of archers, their horses protected inside the circle. When all was in readiness, Master Jaks returned to Llesho's side and drew his sword. Llesho considered his choice of weapons, and decided on his bow and arrow.

They had scarcely taken their places when a dark line appeared over a low rise in the landscape. An army, no bigger than their own but driven by fear of their leader, plunged forward, battle cries shouted as they ran. Llesho tensed and focused his gaze on the rise, where a figure sat astride a restless warhorse. Master Markko, proclaiming himself in the horned helmet of a warlord.

Llesho shivered. He sensed the sharp gaze of the magician pass over him and halt, then turn back again. If an arrow could have reached so far, Llesho would have turned away that searching gaze with a well-fired bolt, but at this range he could only call attention to himself.

“Hold on, boy,” Master Jaks muttered at his side, and Master Den held the head of Llesho's horse, quieting the animal's nervous dance.

Markko was flying down the hill then, his charger striking sparks off the ground beneath its feet, and a bird, huge and lethal, flew over their heads to meet the enemy. It circled overhead, calling encouragement in the deep-voiced cry of a roc. Kaydu shouted a salute to the bird, a magical creature, and would have followed him, Llesho thought, but Master Jaks called out a reminder, “Hold your post.”

Then Markko's forces were upon them. The defensive circle Jaks had ordered bristled with pikes, their staffs planted firmly in the ground and their blades tilted out at the horsemen thundering toward them. They had only seconds to wait. The cavalry reached the circle, but the horsemen could not force their mounts to close with the sharp-toothed fence of pikes. Turned aside, the horsemen met the harrying arrows as Habiba's cavalry darted in for the kill and moved away again. Markko's foot troops followed the scattering horsemen; driven mad by their master, they flung themselves upon the pikes to clear the path for their fellows. Llesho set an arrow and fired. Fired. Fired again, until his quiver was empty. The bird was gone from the sky, but Lling was at his side, one arm tied with a makeshift bandage, the other flinging a fistful of replacement bolts into his hand. She had gathered the arrows falling into their circle from the enemies' bows; Llesho recognized the strange devices marked upon them as he shot again, again.

And then the circle was breached, and the fight turned inward. Llesho dropped his bow and slid from his horse, drawing his sword from its saddle scabbard and his Thebin knife from where it rested at his breast. On foot he moved like a demon, protecting his own belly with the knife in his left hand while he carved at the enemy with the sword in his right. Master Jaks, still on horseback, whirled his sword over his head, striking terror into all who saw him, while his battle horse fought under its master with tooth and hoof. Careful as a mother the mare picked her way around Llesho, snapping at Markko's soldiers, kicking out at them and beating at them with her frantic feet when they fell.

Master Den held his position to Llesho's right flank, warded off an attack with his stave, cracked a head like an egg, and swung around to brush the legs out from under the nearest attacker while knocking the breath from a third with the rising end of the stave.

Bixei was down, Stipes standing over him with a two-handed sword held out in front of him, Hmishi at his back slashing with a long knife and jabbing with a short-handled trident.

“Close up! Close up!” Master Jaks ordered, shoring up their broken circle and drawing it more tightly around Llesho and his guard. Master Den accepted the surrender of Markko's troops left inside the newly re-formed circle. When they had been disarmed and placed on good conduct, Jaks called for retreat: “Back!” He whirled his sword once overhead, and pointed to the fallback position with his blade. Stipes got a shoulder under Bixei's arm and they moved, the pikemen holding their defensive formation. When they met the circle behind them, their numbers swelled, the two circles interlaced, filling in the weak places around Llesho without leaving a break for the enemy to exploit.

Markko was driving his army in a wedge directly at Llesho's circle. If he succeeded, he would divide Habiba's army in two parts. As the circle fell back, Markko pressed forward, until he faced his prey down an alley of his own troops. “I will have you, boy,” he said, a snarling grimace of a smile contorting his face.

Llesho froze, aware suddenly how thin his defense was, just a single band of pikemen between them, and Markko dug his heels into the flanks of his horse, lowered his head over the animal's armored neck, and charged.

The pikemen set their pikes and braced for the onslaught, but at the last moment, Markko urged his horse faster, up, higher than a horse could jump, and the warlord flew over the blades bristling beneath the belly of his steed and landed lightly inside the circle. Master Markko raised a strange weapon of his own devising, a tube shooting sparks of fire and smoke and tiny slivers of crystal sharp as knives from the end. In confusion the defensive circle broke. A picked squad of Markko's followed and joined him in the fray.

“Get down!” Hmishi called.

Under cover of the billowing smoke, Lling knocked Llesho to his knees.

“Pretend you are dead!” she demanded, and pushed him to land with his face in the dirt. Then she fell on top of him, her bandage convincingly stained rust and crimson from her reopened wound. Llesho wondered what had happened to Kaydu, if she'd managed to escape, but a vulture landed on his shoulder and gave the back of his head an imperious peck.

“Cawuuuiet!” the bird squawked, and Llesho wondered if he had gone mad, or if the bird had really told him to be quiet.

“Wha—” he began, but the bird snapped up a strand of his hair and gave it a warning tug.

The smoke was beginning to clear. Through closely lidded eyes, Llesho saw that Master Den had suffered a myriad of tiny cuts which he seemed to be ignoring as he scrambled among the fallen. Stipes had dropped Bixei to the ground only to fall after him, clutching at his eye while blood gushed from between his clenched fingers. Master Jaks was down, on his back beneath his horse, his eyes wide and unseeing. The horse stood quivering but steadfast over her master.

Hmishi crouched at the side of his Thebin companions. His knife lashed out, not at the warlord, but at the legs of his battle horse. The animal screamed and fell to its front knees. Mad with its pain, the horse struggled to rise again, its eyes reddened and rolling wildly in its head. Master Markko sprang free of the animal as it crashed to its side, thrashing with its legs as it tried to rise. Hmishi struck quickly and the animal was dead, its throat cut, the blood splashing the fallen Thebins.

It could as easily have been human blood. Llesho had to remind himself that he was unhurt, and ought to do something more than lie about playing dead. Like stand up and
be
dead, he figured, and stayed where he was. Somehow, Master Markko seemed to have turned the day in his favor, and Llesho could only hope that he would be overlooked in the carnage. A faint hope, with Markko seeking him, but it was enough to keep him facedown in the dirt.

Above him, Llesho heard a terrible cry, and he cringed where he lay, afraid to open his eyes. A deep growl from closer by answered the first cry, and Llesho felt a weight suddenly lift from his heart. Freed of his terrible fear, he turned his head and peered over his shoulder, into the sky, where two beasts—he knew for a fact such beasts did not exist in nature—fought tooth and claw in the air overhead. One was a huge bird, a roc, if such a thing could actually exist. It uttered a challenge, the most desolate sound Llesho had ever heard, as if it contained within itself all the grief of the battle and its losses, and called them forth in a mourner's wailing cry. The other, a creature out of night terrors, was a rodent-faced monster with the haunches of a horse and stiff gray hair instead of feathers covering its broad leathery wings. A long naked rat's tail whipped out behind it. The creature had clawed feet and claws at the joints of its wings, long, fanged teeth and angry red eyes. When it opened its mouth to answer the roc's cry, Llesho had to cover his ears to stop the piercing pain it released instead of sound.

The creatures tangled overhead, the fanged monster grappling the bird with its tail while its claws ripped at the roc's breast. The roc darted its razor-sharp beak at the monster, and when it pulled back, the ends of a bit of flesh dangled from its mouth. The monster emitted another of its soundless screams and began to tumble from the sky, its shape blurring as it fell: now it was a creature out of nightmares with the hands, the face of a man, now it became a man with leathery wings covered in gray hair, now a creature with the hindquarters of a beast and the arms and breast of a human, its human mouth open in a scream that did not stop through all its transformations, until it had fallen to earth.

The roc followed it down, transforming as it did into the witch Habiba, dressed in robes the colors of the bird's plumage. But Markko was gone; no sign of him remained except for a splash of steaming blood where he had fallen, and the remnants of his scattered army.

“You can get up now. And you did well, my daughter.” Habiba tapped the vulture on its long, curved beak, and the bird unfolded, grew arms and legs, and a familiar face.

“Thank you, Father.” Kaydu did not have the success of her father in transforming her clothes with her body. She gathered her discarded uniform that had fallen on the battleground while Habiba bent over the heap of Thebins.

Llesho didn't notice until Habiba started to sort them out that Hmishi had joined them on the pile. “I'm all right,” Hmishi insisted, but his eyes darted wildly in his head, unable to fix on anything.

“Concussion,” Habiba informed him. “Lie still until I can spare someone to escort you to the hospital tent.”

The magician raised Lling with his own hands, and examined her arm before he declared her serviceable if damaged, and able to make her own way to the hospital tent.

With the weight of his companions removed from his back, Llesho was able to rise on his own power and survey the damage. Markko had disappeared and left behind his army—the fallen where they lay, and the defeated wandering the battlefield in confusion and terror.

The field was silent now except for the cries of the wounded, but the ground was muddied with the blood of the dead and churned by the hooves of the horses into a thick black muck. Squads of her ladyship's army passed back and forth over the sucking mire, searching for their own wounded, and marking out the dead for burial.

Closer to hand, Stipes sat cross-legged in the dirt, Bixei's head in his lap. He still held a hand to his damaged eye, but his blood had caked and rusted his fingers in place so that he could not have comfortably moved them if he chose to, or if he'd even remembered that he held them there. Bixei's eyes were closed, but his chest rose and fell in rhythmic breathing.

His own wounds forgotten, Master Den sat quietly at Jaks' side. Jaks' eyes were open, fixed on a distance living eyes could not reach. Whatever the soldier-assassin was seeing in the afterlife, it did not seem to frighten or dismay him. Tenderly Master Den wrapped a cold hand in his broad, warm grasp.

Llesho wanted to pound at Habiba with his fists, to scream at the man and curse him for the devastation that surrounded him, but he found he could not break through the hard, numb shell that separated his bleeding emotions from the outside world.

“What happened?” Llesho demanded an answer from Habiba with the cold authority of a prince. He didn't feel the tears leaving trails in the dust on his face, so he didn't try to hide them.

Habiba looked at him for a long minute. Then he picked up the splintered remains of an arrow and drew two parallel lines in the bloody dirt, added a few lateral lines between them.