Unholy War (32 page)
‘I
adjusted
it. You were in prayer with the chaplain and Baltus needed fresh orders after he’d confirmed what my Trip-wards had already revealed.’ Ramon grinned and waved a hand towards the flowing torrents below. ‘At least we’ve got plenty of water now.’
I should reprimand him
. But the proximity of Jelaska Lyndrethuse and Sigurd Vaas, both tough and competent magi, was intimidating. And he’d probably done the right thing. ‘Very well,’ he said grudgingly.
‘Once the Keshi horsemen reach this road, they’ll be able to ride us down in a few hours,’ Vaas said gruffly. ‘We’ll need a rearguard.’
‘I’ll take that, with my maniple,’ Renn Bondeau piped up instantly.
Still glory-hunting, even here
. But Bondeau probably was the best man for the job.
Seth was about to agree, when Ramon said, ‘I’ve got a better idea. Let’s all do it.’
Renn Bondeau scowled. The rest just looked perplexed.
‘The whole army?’ Seth asked.
‘No, us – we magi, and a few cohorts to deal with any who get through our initial defences. If we can teach them a lesson about following us too close, they’ll be slower to pursue, and our rankers will see that they still have magi fighting alongside them. It’ll give them something to hang some hope on.’
‘An easy victory would boost morale, and maybe buy us the time to reach Ardijah first,’ Jelaska agreed, patting him on the shoulder. Seth noticed Severine Tiseme glaring indignantly at this familiarity.
For Kore’s sake, now they’re fighting over the little villain!
‘All right. Let’s do that,’ Seth said, so that it might look to at least a few people that he was actually in control.
They set up their ambush on the road behind them, with all the magi involved, except for him, Tyron and the healers. Apparently they were ‘too valuable’ – or maybe it was to maintain the illusion that the commanders were with the main body of the army, or something.
I think they just want to be heroes
, Seth thought grumpily, but he left them behind, laying their elaborate plans, and with Tyron, rode west along the road to Ardijah with the footmen. The healers, Lanna Jureigh of the Thirteenth and a greying Estellan woman named Carmina, sole mage survivor of her Brician legion, had two dozen wagons laden with wounded from Shaliyah. The two healers looked exhausted.
‘So much for the glory of command,’ he commented gloomily to Tyron. His friend looked away; he was no fighter anyway. The chaplain had more worthwhile skills, in Seth’s opinion: poetry and theology.
‘The credit always goes to the commander in the end,’ Tyron told him, which was a comforting thought.
The midday sun might be cooler than during the march across Kesh last year, but it was still bad enough for men raised in the cold climates of Yuros. It wasn’t the only problem either: flux had been running through the soldiers, leading Seth to the conclusion that armies were little more than giant defecating machines.
‘Sir!’ A mounted scout trotted to meet him. ‘There is a junction ahead.’
‘And?’
‘Well, there’s a track that leads north, sir, and we don’t know what’s up there.’ He looked over his shoulder uncertainly. ‘Sir, do we proceed across the junction, or scout the way north first?’
Seth looked at Tyron.
What would Ramon do?
Seth found himself wondering.
Halt everything and play safe? Or laugh at such a trivial problem? Or maybe …
‘Send a cohort of mounted Estellan to scout the track, but keep the column moving,’ he ordered, and the scout saluted, and galloped off.
A few minutes later a party of swarthy, dark-haired Estellan –
who don’t look very different from the enemy
, now Seth thought about it – thundered past with lances high, dipping the points in salute then wheeling away down the northwards path that vanished into the low hills bordering the floodplain. He and Tyron decided they’d best wait for them to report back, so the column proceeded westwards whilst they chatted about the poet Marcel, who had been commissioned to capture the glory of the Second Crusade. They agreed that his famous line,
pounding hearts resplendent in the intoxication of victory
, seemed to have nothing at all to do with what they were going through, and what’s more, made little sense anyway. The poet Guilnes’ line,
Gritty eyes bleeding tears of homesickness
, was much closer to reality, they decided.
As the healers’ wagons were passing, Seth heard the pounding of hooves on the northern road.
‘That will be the Estellan cavalry,’ Tyron commented. ‘About time.’
‘What are they doing?’ Seth squinted at a dozen riders who had careered into sight and were thrashing at their horses like madmen. Their hooves shook the earth, far more than he could have believed from so few men. ‘Are they racing?’
Then an avalanche of Keshi appeared, screaming to Ahm and bearing down on the Estellan riders like the Ghost Hunt of Schlessen myth.
‘Kore’s Blood!’ Seth jerked into motion, glancing swiftly from side to side as he tried to see who or what might be deployed, but there were only wagons full of the wounded in sight, except for the guard cohort that followed him about.
Unbelievably, in the midst of the onset of panic, some rational part of him noted that what he
should
have done was deploy a maniple right
there
, where the track narrowed between higher ground, and sent more than just twenty men along the road. But then dread set in, and a kind of paralysis, and all he could do was open and close his mouth like a goldfish, leaving Tyron, beside him, to shriek orders at the pilus.
‘Form up, form up,’ the chaplain cried. He singled out a runner and ordered, ‘Bring men! Any men! Run!’
The young soldier shot away along the eastern road like a startled rabbit.
As the cohort formed a ragged line, two deep, one of the rankers grabbed the reins of Seth’s horse and pulled him in behind the line. Tyron came with him, struggling to control his spooked beast, and Seth’s mount caught the fear and began to jerk about. Both men had to cling on and rein in hard, and Seth barely registered the Estellan riders go down, caught from behind and stabbed in the back. The dead men’s horses ran on, thundering wildly past the cohort and straight towards the hospital wagons.
The tide of Keshi riders kept coming, scimitars waving as they ululated triumphantly. He tried to count them – forty, sixty? – but his brain could barely engage. The pilus was bellowing orders and the rankers were locking their shields together, but they were covering only half the open space. The Keshi poured closer, a tide of men and horses.
‘Sir! The gnosis!’ the pilus shouted in his face.
Huh?
Tyron shouted, and blue fire billowed from his hands into the onrushing enemy. One rider reared up and fell as the one behind him collided with him and the two went down in a billow of dust and thrashing limbs, but the rest flowed around them. They slammed into the cohort’s front line and the space in front of Seth became a mass of men and beasts, the riders’ horses rearing up and crashing their hooves against the cohort’s shields like a wave breaking, battering on steel, wood and bone. Scimitars slashed downwards. The noise was deafening.
The line of Rondians buckled, but the second rank shoved forward, plugging gaps and stabbing up into the chests and necks of the horses, shouting to Kore as they kept driving forward. The Keshi recoiled, the horses flailing backwards and the riders lashing about frantically to avoid being dragged from their saddles. But a glance left and right told Seth that the rest of the Keshi were simply going around them.
He jabbed a finger at a Keshi who seemed to be breaking through, more in panic than aggression, and mage-fire flashed. The man convulsed in shock as the narrow burst of energy blasted into his face, and he collapsed. Seth shouted in triumph and started doing it again and again, blazing away in a haze of anger and fear, barely thinking.
Half his bolts went astray, but his attacks took toll. Then the arrows began to fly, the first one flickering past his nose and hitting someone behind him. He realised he’d completely forgotten to shield – the most basic of mistakes – and rectified that in a frightened frenzy. He couldn’t see Tyron, only a swirling mass of Keshi pouring around the sides of his cohort and aiming arrows. Some had already reached the wagons, and he could feel the throb of the gnosis – the healer-magi were protecting their patients. He whipped his horse about again, blasted fire into the face of another Keshi, swatted away a maddening swarm of arrows. He cast about …
… and saw Tyron lying on his back with an arrow through his left eye.
Something inside him snapped, and a torrent of rage poured out. First came the rational spells, like the sylvan-gnosis he used to wreck the bows of the Keshi, then wind and lightning burst from him like a scream. Even then, it wasn’t hugely effective, but it did blast over a few of the enemy, and it forced the rest to recoil as dust blasted up into their faces. Then he started to think, and let his more natural affinities take over: he was primarily a Hermetic mage. It wasn’t as effective in combat as other Studies, but he was a pure-blood and facing only
mounted
men …
The Keshi dimly felt the blast of pure terror and despair that throbbed from him, but their horses – targeted through his animagery – went into a frenzy. They panicked, first thrashing about, then tearing away, their riders clinging on desperately. Those who tumbled off were speared before they could rise as Rondian reinforcements poured into the junction. In seconds the attack had completely fallen apart and the brief engagement was over.
The junction flooded with soldiers, but Seth barely noticed. He was huddled over the cooling body of Tyron Frand, crying so hard his eyes felt like they were burning away. He felt like he was floating alone in a cloud of grief, but suddenly Lanna Jureigh was standing over him, her usually gentle face hard and angry. ‘Get up. You’re our commander.’
‘They killed him – he forgot to shield –
I
forgot. We should have shielded—’
She slapped him, not with her hand, but with her mind, and he reeled, but she pulled him upright, using telekinetic gnosis to augment her strength. She looked nothing like a healer right now. ‘Stand
up
. We’ve lost more than just one man and the soldiers need to see their general.’
‘No, they don’t. I failed them, I let them down—’
She mind-slapped him again, so hard he staggered, but again she held him upright and berated him in a low voice, pitched for his ears alone. ‘Yes, you did: you set no outriders and you led us through a junction you didn’t scout. You let the rest of the magi gallivant off on some meaningless mission half their number could have achieved. Then you fought like a barely-blooded child.’
He stared at her, trying not to fall to his knees again, not with so many watching.
I deserve this
, he told himself.
Her face softened, just a fraction. ‘You also saved us.’
He swallowed, nodded.
She gripped his shoulder steadily. ‘Learn from this, General Korion.’
He looked around, finally registered all the other dead: as many Keshi as Rondian. No doubt the rest of the Estellan cavalry were dead too. ‘Someone else should be in command,’ he whispered.
‘Ideally,’ she agreed, ‘but for now, it’s you.’ She stepped away and, very showily, went down on one knee. ‘Hail to General Korion, who saved the day,’ she shouted.
The gathered men responded, crying, ‘Hail! Hail!’, all acclaiming their general who had saved the day. It was a myth in the making, but he had to pretend it was real for their sakes, while his only friend in the whole army lay dead in the dust at his feet.
14
Noors
The term ‘Noor’ comes from an Old Rondian word for dark. It was initially used for the darker-skinned peoples of south Yuros, but more recently it has become a blanket term for the people of Antiopia. Though not originally intended as such, it is a term of derision, not used in polite circles. Perversely, some Antiopians themselves use the term when dealing with Rondians, muddying the waters over the correctness of the term.
O
RDO
C
OSTRUO
C
OLLEGIATE
, P
ONTUS
Northern Javon, on the continent of Antiopia
Thani (Aprafor) 929
10
th
month of the Moontide
With a despairing wail, the young Rondian legionary came at Elena, his sword a blur. About them were the twitching bodies of his comrades – but the movement was their nervous systems failing from the mage-bolts that had taken them from behind. The rest had been cut open and blood was still pumping from fresh wounds.
Elena had raised her hand to fire off another bolt when Kazim ghosted in and buried his blade in the soldier’s back, punching through his boiled leather breastplate as if it were silk and skewering his heart. As the dying man sagged into Kazim’s waiting arms, Elena looked away, not because there were more foes, but so she did not see what Kazim did next.
Instead she surveyed the tangled bodies about them.
They should have run. Their mage was already dead.
But that didn’t unnerve her; what left her shaken still was the reminder that her lover garnered his power from killing, then denying another soul whatever afterlife existed.
If Kore exists, he surely can’t have intended such a thing …
The look on Kazim’s face as he rose from his ‘feeding’ told her that he didn’t think Ahm approved either.
The six men protecting the dead mage were strewn before her; the rest of the Dorobon cohort lay dead or close to it around the pool she’d poisoned; they’d been delirious already before Kazim had launched lightning into the water and caught almost all of them in the blast. The mage hadn’t been able to protect them, he might be a pure-blood, but he’d been a Fire-mage, with the wrong skill-set to combat the poison.
She walked over to the pool, immersed a hand, extended her awareness and began to purify it. It took a long time, but she owed it to the Jhafi who relied on it for water for themselves, their livestock and their crops.
The sun was dropping towards the west and the waxing moon was rising in the east when she finally looked up. Kazim was stalking among the corpses, looking for valuables, anything they could trade for food and equipment. His pupils were dilated: the aftermath of taking another soul. This butchery offended him, she knew.
That’s war, my love. At least we’re safe.
This was the fifth patrol they’d destroyed since that first way-station, and the third dead mage. Magi were precious – these losses would be hurting the Dorobon badly.
Kazim came and knelt beside her at the water’s edge. ‘Is it clean yet?’
She sent a final pulse of cleansing gnosis through the pool and took its measure. ‘Yes.’
Kazim splashed water onto his face, scrubbing fiercely at his whiskery, blood-spattered visage. ‘You’re all right?’ he asked afterwards.
‘Not a touch.’
The mage they’d slain was a well-dressed youth with a fashionable beard and moustache. His handsome features had been contorted by the agony of having poison dissolving his insides while another mage blasted him with water-borne lightning. He’d apparently been a diviner, but he hadn’t seen death coming. She plucked a sapphire periapt from his neck and took his gold ring, a griffin signet bearing the word
Fidelus
.
Loyal. I suppose he was
.
‘It’s just slaughter,’ Kazim said in a low, dead voice. ‘They can’t touch us, not if we’re careful. They don’t stand a chance. This is not war.’
‘Oh yes it is: this is precisely what war is. It’s the stories that get it wrong, all that talk about stupid things like glory and honour.’
They looted two flasks of brandy and a hard cheese from the pilus, together with what few coins they could find, so at least they could pay for supplies next time they were in need. They picked up a couple of uniforms that looked like they might fit them, then headed for the dell where they’d left the
Greyhawk
.
They were halfway back, with Elena trying to calculate how long they had until sunset, when she glanced back and cursed. ‘Shit! Get down!’
Kazim obeyed instantly and she cloaked them both in a haze she hoped would blend into the mirages all round them. A sleek, dun-sailed windskiff had appeared from the south, with illusion rendering it all but invisible to a non-mage.
Kore! That’s Gurvon’s skiff
! She could make out three shapes in the hull.
Kazim growled throatily. ‘Him?’
‘Mask yourself and stay close. Don’t look at it, or try to scry. Use the gnosis sparingly. We’ve got twenty minutes before the sun goes down, and an hour after that before full dark.’
‘We can take them,’ Kazim said in a low voice.
She shook her head. ‘We don’t know who is with him, or how many others are here.’ She glanced around and picked out a sheltered route towards the next outcropping. ‘Stay low. Crawl.’
He wanted to argue, but she slipped from his grasp and began to shimmy forward on her belly, chafing knees and elbows. The dust soaked into their bloody clothes, but they reached the boulders undetected. She looked back and saw the skiff circling the oasis, only a few hundred yards away. She slipped into the lee of the nearest boulder and pulled Kazim to her. ‘We’ll wait here until they land, then move.’
He put his lips to her ear. ‘Let’s attack! There’s only three of them—’
‘No! It would be just like Gurvon to sacrifice a few low-bloods to lure us out. There could be a dozen more magi hidden and waiting. We’ve got to get out of here as soon as darkness falls.’
I knew it was too easy …
‘You’re afraid,’ he growled, not willing to let it go.
Her eyes narrowed, not in anger but consideration. Then she thought,
Yes, and that’s no bad thing. Gurvon always has something up his sleeve, a way to attack your blind side
, she admitted to herself.
Yes, I’m afraid
. If you could, you should always be the one to choose the battleground. You didn’t let the enemy do it. She glanced sideways at Kazim’s young, hard face, with its rakish beard and golden skin and amended herself:
No, I’m not afraid of Gurvon. I’m afraid of losing you.
‘We’re not ready,’ she said instead.
‘How can we not be ready? We’ve trained for months – we’ve wiped out six patrols now. We can destroy him.’
‘No,’ she whispered firmly. ‘Follow me.’ She slid from his side and began to crawl away. She heard him exhale angrily, but he came after her and she released her own pent-up breath. He was like the young Rondians Gurvon used to recruit, full of their own invincibility. It could take years to knock it out of them – if they lasted that long.
Kazim hadn’t yet taken on a mage in a fight; so far Elena had dealt with those. There hadn’t been time to teach him the finer points of gnostic duelling, so his role was to blast from a distance, then close in fast. A clever mage like Gurvon would take him down in a heartbeat, despite all the months she’d spent training him. Some things only the real world taught.
They reached the
Greyhawk
undetected as the sun went down and the landscape fell into gloom. The skiff was covered in its dun sails and hidden beneath the lee of a rock. Full dark was still some time away, however, and she knew Gurvon would be watching the skies: the bodies had still been warm when they left, so clearly fresh. ‘We must wait now,’ she told Kazim, and pulled him into the lee of a different boulder, where the shade was thickest. They huddled together as the shadows deepened, quivering at the slightest sound, while the quarter-moon climbed the sky.
Finally twilight became full night and at last she felt safe enough to move. ‘Let’s go,’ she whispered, and they dragged the
Greyhawk
into the open and re-set the mast and sail. In minutes they were rising just above the ground and turning into the wind. It was too dark to navigate normally, but if they could just get away from here, she could open up her senses and begin to feel their path home. ‘Steer southeast,’ she whispered, almost the opposite direction to where their base lay. ‘I want to make sure we’re clear.’
Kazim looked at her quizzically, then followed her instructions. She set the sails and tied them down, then wriggled around the mast, nestled herself against Kazim’s thigh and peered behind them. She opened up her senses, listening hard. She might be only a half-blood, but few people could operate near her undetected, even pure-bloods. After a time, she began to relax. ‘I think we might have got away,’ she breathed.
Kazim bared his teeth, luminescent in the moonlight. ‘Next time we fight, yes?’ he asked hopefully.
‘When we fight Gurvon, it will be well-planned, and at a time and place we choose.’
He kept one hand on the tiller and stroked her head with the other. ‘It is hard to run away.’
‘We won’t always,’ she promised him. She reached wider, feeling relaxed enough to begin finding landmarks to navigate by, eager to be home and get washed. That was when she sensed something. She cast about: an owl, above and behind, following them.
He started, almost looked. ‘What is it?’
‘An owl, about two hundred yards back. It’s unlikely to be a shapeshifter, not given its size, but it could be controlled by an animagus or possessed by a daemon.’
She felt him shudder slightly. To him such things were still creatures of darkness, not the tools of the mage’s trade. He was learning, but not fast enough.
‘Either way, the mage controlling it can see through its eyes, and that means we’re in trouble,’ she whispered. She moved back to the mast to give herself a clear line of sight.
Kazim looked at her worriedly. ‘What do I do?’
‘Bear to the right. Keep heading away from home.’
She peered.
Now, let’s see
…
She had no affinity at all for beast-magic, but Gurvon did, and if he was controlling that damned bird, he could potentially track them wherever they went. And it mightn’t be the only one he had in the sky.
I don’t have the affinities to deal with this … but Kazim does.
She turned his way. ‘If I showed you how to do something, could you? I warn you, it won’t be pleasant.’
He nodded warily. ‘Of course.’
‘Okay, listen with your mind.’ She opened up to him and connected with his aura. Every mage’s aura had a ‘feel’ unique to them; his was a pleasant soft leather. She had been told hers was like cool water.
She took over at the tiller so that he could prepare, and shielded her own mind, because what he was about to do could affect more than birds, and he’d never done anything like it before. She took one last glance upwards with her gnostic sight to check where the owl was, then told him:
He looked at her uncertainly, clearly not proud of what he was about to attempt, then he set his shoulders and released his gnosis. A pulse of psychic energy washed out from him and she blanched at its force. She felt the owl go down, like a flickering candle winking out.
At the same time around a thousand other candles went out around them.
*
Gurvon Gyle shuddered as the birds he was linked to died in an abrupt flare of agony. For a second he was dazed and helpless, clutching onto the rock. The world was a black yawning hole and he was falling into it. Then he pulled his mind clear, shaking.
Great Kore …
‘Boss?’ Mara Secordin didn’t really do concern, but she did do curiosity. Her slab-like jowls quivered and her eyes widened momentarily. ‘I felt that,’ she said with an air of disbelief.
He pushed himself upright.
Kore’s Blood, they probably felt it in Pallas
… He reached out with animagery, seeking his linked birds. He drew a complete blank.
‘My birds are dead, and so’s pretty much everything else within what I’d guess is a mile’s radius,’ he reported, scarcely believing it. He reached out, looking for other animal minds, and found a gaping void. ‘There’s
nothing
left.’
Rutt Sordell was beside the skiff, scrying. He looked up and said warily, ‘Elena doesn’t do animagery.’
‘Someone with her does.’ Gurvon rubbed his temples as he straightened. He trusted Mara, as much as he trusted anyone, but it didn’t do to look surprised in front of her. She was a predator, and weakness excited her in all the wrong ways. ‘The eyewitnesses at that way-station said there was a Noorie with her.’
‘I like Noorie men,’ Mara commented distantly. ‘Spicy and lean. A little small, though.’
He winced at the various mental images her words conjured, and changed the subject. ‘That killing pulse was of Ascendant strength.’ He pushed away from the boulder and steadied himself, then lurched towards the skiff. ‘Who the Hel has she got with her?’ he muttered.
Sordell bent over his scrying bowl again. ‘She’s well-shielded,’ he complained. ‘I can’t get anything.’ Abruptly he tipped the bowl over, spewing liquid light over the sand, where it drained away as it faded. ‘The bitch is too slippery.’
Gurvon cursed silently. ‘Make contact with the Dorobon. Tell them to collect their corpses. And double the reward. There must be a Jhafi somewhere prepared to break ranks.’
It would be to no avail, of course. The sky was empty, above them and all the way south. In the morning the natives would find dead birds and lizards by the hundreds, the last remaining trace of their skirmish. It was easier to be a ghost than to catch one, and Elena knew that as well as he did.