Twixt Heaven And Hell (7 page)

“Yes,” replied Arric, always vaguely uncomfortable on not having some title to grant the awesome creature. He quickly explained the strategy that had been decided for allowing the thousands of trapped soldiers escape from their hideaway-turned-prison.

“Makaelic, the enemy will not doubt the sincerity of the assault if you are present to assist it,” suggested Darius.

To Arric’s surprise, Makaelic agreed. “Yes. Though where I am, my foes will be. Your men must be wary.”

‘My foes.’ Demons. If Makaelic was present for the battle, Demons would show to oppose him. The feint would become another struggle between the two great forces of the Aeonians. In such a battle, men could only flee – or fall.

Makaelic left as suddenly as he’d arrived. As soon as the doors had closed again, Darius announced that he would be taking the Gryphons into the field again with the intent of unraveling the mystery of the teleportation spell.

“No, Darius,” Arric said. “Carry out your investigations from within Bastion.” He would not let the man use this crisis as an excuse to run about the border again.

Anger took its customary place upon Darius’s expression. “Arric –“

Arric cut him off. “This is not open to debate, Darius! You will remain in Bastion. This council is dismissed.”

Chapter Ten

Darius was waiting just outside the chamber when Arric entered the corridor. Arric's already-sour expression darkened further when he read the challenge in the man's posture. Arric’s route back to his own chambers took him past Darius, who fell in step with him.

Neither man spoke for a moment, until the other wizards were out of hearing. Then Darius rounded on his ostensible leader.

“You see now that I told no lie, Arric. I was right to investigate those marauders. I found evidence of this magic. You ignored me and claimed to the entire Council that I had misled them about my reasons for straying from your orders. And now we have a crisis – we are abandoning the best-planned assault in Bastion's history!”

Arric had been expecting this, but the venom in Darius’s voice surpassed anything he had seen from the man. His eyes were afire and his fists were clenched – there was a challenge to the way he was looking at Arric.

It was then that Arric realized – Darius was very near to hating him. How did such ire arise in a wizard of Bastion? How had a man taught by the wisest of his elders become nearly as fiery and unpredictable as one of the enemy?

What was it that made Darius so very different?

Drawing a deep breath, Arric spoke with a determinedly neutral voice. “Darius, I never believed you had actually lied to the council, nor did I say anything of the sort. Even if I had sung your praises to all of Bastion, we could not have averted this. You returned to us days ago. The evidence you brought us was barely even a theory. Unless you knew more and kept it from us?”

Darius looked even more offended at that implication. “I have never kept anything from the Council, Arric. Do you doubt my loyalty? Is that why you constantly seek to cage me here in Bastion, keeping me useless?”

“Of course not! Darius,” Arric shut his eyes momentarily. This was like speaking to a child! “Darius, you are an exceedingly talented wizard, we all acknowledge that. For that exact reason, you belong in Bastion with the rest of us. You will do the most good lending your talents to the greater effort. You are wasted in these tiny skirmishes that the Gryphons engage in, no matter the success you’ve enjoyed.”

The praise did not work as Arric intended. Darius did seem to lose much of his ire, but was no friendlier for it. Instead of fiery, his demeanor became so cold that Arric half-expected the man’s breath to start misting as he spoke in sharp, measured tones.

“Wasted? My Gryphons have put the fear of Heaven into the enemy along the entire border. We slaughtered so many at one point that enemy commanders refused to send raiders through any area we were so much as
rumored
to be crossing. We reduced their efforts to absolute
futility
, and you say ‘wasted?’ Arric, can you not see that these are the things that will eventually win the War?

“Where I am wasted, Arric, is here in Bastion. I have not the temperament for research, nor for the instruction of acolytes. I belong in the fight. There are plenty of wizards who spend the bulk of their time on the border –“

“Yes, but where the Council sends them, Darius! Not wherever they please!”

Even Arric’s outburst failed to excite the errant wizard. “My methods work, Arric. The things I am doing are having true effect on both our forces and those of our foe. I cannot see how you can manage to ignore that I am handing you results. Instead, you chain me here, out of some perverse fear that I will go and do something new, when that is
exactly what we need
. A wizard from the Forging would hardly know the difference between the battles he fought and our own. In three hundred years of war, where have our ways gotten us? Back and forth over a few miles of land, every soldier fighting to reclaim what his father lost. It is time to break the pattern, Arric.”

Darius held Arric’s eye a moment before turning away and stalking down the passage.

Chapter Eleven

Standing completely still, with his chest pressed against the bole of a tree, Ammu watched and listened. Every inch of skin was covered in a sticky mixture of mud and tree sap, rendering him the same color as the bark of the thousands of trees around him. Leaves, small branches, and even vines had been fastened into his armor. Even had one known he was there, finding him amidst the vast green and brown backdrop would have been near impossible until the searcher had drawn close enough to touch with Ammu’s outstretched arm.

A slight ache had begun in Ammu’s back, down near his hips. He had been standing just as he was now for over four hours, and his only movement was the slight rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. Had he been able, he would have stopped that too. There was no telling what might give him away, and his two duties as sentry were to see, and to not be seen.

The people from his tribe made the best sentries and scouts, especially here so near to their once-home. They knew the trees, the grass, the birds and the other wildlife. They knew what belonged and what did not. From their village on the banks of The Water, they had fished and hunted and lived in simplicity and peace.

Then the strange men had come, with their weapons of steel. They took away men and women both, and slaughtered any who resisted. Sometimes they killed seemingly for the joy of it. Men, women, and children of Ammu’s people had died on the points of spears and swords, axes and arrows. Until the men of the City arrived, and drove off the dark, evil ones who’d so abused Ammu’s simple folk.

Ammu’s grandfather had been one of the first men to join with the men of the City, the great place of stone called Bastion. They were taught how to make war, and to the effort of vengeance they bent their own knowledge; Disguise, stalking, how to imitate the bird calls so that your quarry would not recognize its enemies gathering. Ammu’s people became great hunters of men. Bastion’s armies were grateful for it, for they now had a decisive edge amidst the woodlands near the river.

Soon though, the Enemy began utilizing the same techniques. The captives they’d taken had taught them, voluntarily or under the threat of execution or torture – or the knowledge had been taken in other ways, ways only hinted at in dark ruminations by the wizards. The Enemy lost its fear of the woodlands, and soon the ebb and flow of the war rolled the border back, beyond the river-peoples’ village. The Enemy did not forgive or forget, and it was razed to the ground.

Ammu’s people had escaped, warned by Bastion’s soldiers. They resettled much further up the river, in lands beyond the reach of the Enemy. The people continued to send their sons to serve in the armies of Bastion. Ammu had seen the city of stone, and like all folk from the hinterland tribes he had been properly awed – but he had little desire to stay there for long. He preferred the woodlands of his youth, and even more so, the woodlands of his tribe’s past.

Now he was here, closer than ever before to the home he had never known, helping to prepare a great assault on the Enemy. He allowed himself a tiny smile, figuring that any foe close enough to mark it was close enough to make him out anyways, camouflage or no.

From somewhere in front of him, closer to the rim of the valley, Ammu heard the ululating trill of the
piji
bird. Anybody else who heard it was unlikely to notice, it blended so well into the background of other bird calls and forest noises.

Ammu, though, paid close attention. The
piji
sang only at dusk and dawn, and the sun was yet high in the sky. Another sentry had spied someone approaching.

Whoever it was had entered the web. No less than four rings of lookouts encased the valley in a thick shell, each layer growing better-armed and more numerous. The first ring merely watched. The second ring, which Ammu was a part of, would make contact with anyone not deemed hostile; the third would offer initial resistance to anyone who was. And the fourth would be where any real battle was fought, with the outer three rings picking off stragglers and preventing any escape. No knowledge of this valley must ever reach the Enemy.

There were many, Ammu realized, and coming directly for him. The first he saw wore uniforms of Bastion, though those uniforms bore the dark stains of dried blood. Still he did not reveal himself. The Enemy may have taken the uniforms off the bodies of the fallen, and Ammu intended to let these men fall through to the third ring, where there were enough soldiers and lookouts to delay them if their intentions were evil.

In the rear of the train – Ammu counted sixty-eight men – was a Wizard. The man trudged along after the weary, battered soldiers. Behind him the trampled foliage sprang back up, concealing their passage. Ammu decided that they were almost certainly friendly, though some misfortune had befallen them – and that did not bode well for the many troops within the valley. The Wizard called to his men to halt as he passed Ammu, and then stopped and looked the sentry directly in the eye.

“Come out of hiding, fellow. I don’t know exactly where in this damned valley the commanders are, and I need to see them at once.”

Such was Ammu’s shock at the nonchalant way in which he’d been discovered – he would later console himself that sixty-eight soldiers had strolled by within an arm’s length and not known he was there – that he remained perfectly still even after the wizard addressed him. The wizard finally grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away from the tree, much to the amazement of the soldiers.

“Come, I say! We’re survivors of the enemy attack on Nebeth, and I need to see the commander of this valley right away!”

That shook Ammu into action. Fortress Nebeth had been attacked?

“Follow me, Wizard. I will lead you to General Theodoric.”

The soldiers – obviously fatigued and some of them wounded – followed as the wizard took the lead, no longer bothering to conceal their path. On the way to the center of the valley and the General, Ammu twice saw other lookouts, but he did not show it. He was sure that no other but he would have seen them and he did not want to shame them.

It took ten minutes by the path Ammu chose, a deer track that the men trailing him would not damage greatly. They had been constantly traveling downhill, the canopy rising ever higher above them, the trees around growing greater and greater until the largest were as wide as a spear was long. Ammu knew that the trees in this deep part of the forested valley were as old as the War, perhaps older, and as beautiful as the Angels themselves. He looked behind him. Neither the wizard nor the soldiers seemed to appreciate the majesty that surrounded them – but then, they were very tired and no doubt full of dire thoughts.

All at once the trees began to thin, and a new forest spread before them. Below the green canopy of leaves was one of canvas, thousands of tents housing men and pavilions housing equipment and stores taking every available bit of space between the mighty trunks of the trees. The canvas was dyed to match the color of the bark, and near the outside of the camp – Ammu thought of it more as a city, for there were far more soldiers in this place than there were people in his home village – the tents were arrayed much as Ammu himself was, with branches, bark, and bits of vine to disguise them.

There was no disguising the vastness of the camp, though, and these efforts were in vain. Any may who saw it would know exactly what purpose this place served. It was Ammu’s task to make sure that no Enemy ever made it this far – or, if they did, that they never escaped the forest to speak of it.

Into the city of tents they walked, and the soldiers there looked upon them warily, if not yet in open alarm.

As was natural with the camps of Bastion, the commander’s pavilion lay at the very center of the ordeal. General Theodoric was there with most of his commanders and every wizard not currently involved in the concealment spells. They knew the order to attack was close, and the General wanted to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.

***

This campaign had been Theodoric's idea from the beginning, ever since scouts had discovered the valley. Nebeth had been lost and recovered innumerable times since the Forging and he was tired of constantly battling for the same stronghold. Bastion need another focal point for the border. That meant another fortress, and Cairn-by-the-river was the perfect place to build it. That the Enemy had always held that particular spot did not deter the General – if anything, it encouraged him. With sufficient numeric superiority and the element of surprise, they would overwhelm the defenders of the rudimentary defenses. By the time serious effort could go towards forcing them back out, they would have built far more determined fortifications.

It would be a wooden structure at first of course, the General mused as he was supposed to be looking over the attack plans – which he had formulated and memorized, in any case. With the number of men he could put to work and the experienced carpenters he had with him, Theodoric planned to erect a formidable bailey over the course of a single week. This would constitute the inner wall of the finished fortress, once they secured the position well enough to start thinking about erecting a more permanent stone structure. Stone could be quarried from the cliffs nearby as well as from the mountains near Bastion, and then sailed down the river…

The General was immediately and irrevocably pulled from his reverie by a voice that he should not be able to hear, not here in his valley so far from Fortress Nebeth. When he looked up and confirmed what his ears had told him, he muttered a curse. What was the commander of Fortress Nebeth doing here? Theodoric didn’t bother voicing the question.

“Theodoric! I have dire news.” Wizard Ethion said as he approached. “I think we had best speak in private.”

“Look around you, Ethion. There is precious little privacy here – whatever you tell me will soon be known to every man in camp. Just go ahead and say it.”

Ethion looked displeased, but went ahead. “Fortress Nebeth has fallen. We are all that escaped.”

It was really no surprise to the General. He’d known as soon as he’d seen the Wizard – but it certainly shocked his men, who nonetheless were disciplined enough to keep their muttering to a dull roar.

Hearing it aloud was different than simply knowing, though. Theodoric closed his eyes for a moment, trying to reconcile what he knew now with what had been true only moments before.

“How?” was all he asked.

“Judging by the news out of Bastion just before the attack, it was some new magic. A spell that can take men from one part of the world and deliver them to another, far away, in an instant.”

The General’s eyes grew wide as his mind churned through the implications of that. Such an ability would convey an enormous advantage. As any General must, he knew that the primary difficulty in the War was having the men and supplies where you needed them, and if you didn’t have them there then you must
get
them there. The army that could solve the problems of time and distance with magic…

“This is not good,” Theodoric announced unnecessarily. “Not good at all.”

“You have a talent for understatement, General. This is disastrous, nothing short of that. The Fortress was surrounded inside of two hours. It was taken within five. I cannot begin to estimate the full enemy numbers that now hold Nebeth, as they attacked during the night. I know that we lost at least five wizards, and almost certainly the entire garrison perished – almost a thousand men, General. The men here, and myself, managed to escape through the tunnels we’d been building, secret tunnels with disguised exits to be used in case Nebeth should ever fall.” The wizard smiled bitterly. “We did not expect to need them so quickly, of course.”

Theodoric looked up in alarm. “Tunnels? And one leads here? How could you risk -”

“No no,” said Ethion quickly. “None lead anywhere near here. I destroyed them behind us, in any case. The Fortress was taken three days ago, Theo. I came here because to go anywhere else would take us through land the Enemy may now patrol, and because you needed to be informed.”

“That is most certain,” Theodoric said.

The Enemy holding Nebeth was nothing new, but holding it without holding the land around it was a decidedly unforeseen circumstance. He looked to his maps. Whoever controlled Nebeth could threaten land for many leagues around; always having that secure fortress to fall back to should trouble arise. He looked at Ethion once more. “You were able to warn Bastion of this?”

“Yes, I spoke with Arric himself. He told me that ‘help was on the way’ before the Enemy severed the globe links.”

“Good, good. They’ll send Second Army to contain the Enemy within the Fortress,” Theodoric said, even as he reflected on the fact that with this new spell the enemy could defy such containment at any time. With a finger, the General traced lines on the map, detailing the routes that Second would take to the Fortress. Might the Enemy move men into their path, with this magic? There were places where a few hundred could hold up an entire army of thousands, bleed them within tight spaces, and then magic themselves away again before they were overwhelmed. The more he thought about it, the more dire the situation seemed.

“What else can you tell me about this spell?” Theodoric asked.

“I know almost nothing. I felt the spells in the distance. There was a vast amount of power in them, beyond what a single sorcerer could conjure. With so much power, I would guess that the spell itself is difficult, which would limit its use to the most powerful sorcerers. This, at least, is good news. If they continue to use it, it will tie up their best magical assets.”