Shaken to our souls, we formed up and went in pursuit of the Maisirian army. Less than two hours from Penda, we found it. Or rather, we found a company of mounted archers. They lofted two volleys into the column, then fled before the cavalry screen could pursue them. In the tumult, two companies of Negaret darted against a supply train and seized half a dozen wagons, losing only one man.
That began the long bloodletting. Every day we were hit in the rear, flanks, seldom from the front. The retreating Maisirians seldom stood to battle. When they did, they were an impossibly brave unit that would fight to the last. But these “famous victories” added no noble names to the streamers on regimental colors, fought as they were where two dirt lanes crossed, or over an abandoned and burning village of a dozen huts. Each time we fought, we took casualties.
As did the Maisirians. Petre estimated we killed four Maisirians for every Numantian death. But there were always more Maisirians streaming to serve, ready to die. Sometimes they fought well, more often they surrendered or fled. But they still fought, and none of our prisoners had any doubt King Bairan would destroy us in the end. Strangely enough, many of them wanted to enter our service in spite of this. One prisoner shrugged and said it was enough to live the day as best you could. Tomorrow would bring its own evil.
The peasants’ courage was in spite of their officers. When we captured one, he hardly ever asked about his men, but about his ransom. In the meantime, they insisted on being treated like the great lords they imagined themselves to be.
We hoped for some communication with the Maisirian army, for prisoners were draining our resources faster than the ever-lengthening supply chain could replenish them. But no answer came to our sorcerous or truce-flagged inquiries.
Consider the Numantian Army on its triumphant march through Maisir. It’s all too easy to envision a proud phalanx of brightly armored horsemen, courageous infantrymen tramping in even ranks behind them. Of course in the vanguard would be the Emperor Tenedos and his most noble Tribune Damastes á Cimabue.
Here is the reality: a seething mass three leagues wide if the countryside was flat enough to permit our locust march to spread out, trailing all the way back to the previous day’s encampment. There were more than just the almost two million men we had under arms. There were the sutlers who peddled their wares from a pack or a wagon. There were the women, some Numantian from every province — and how they reached Penda I’ll never know — and more Maisirians that had joined us along the march.
There were the prisoners, shambling along, barely guarded. Sometimes one or a dozen would break away and run for a concealing ravine. Sometimes we let them go, sometimes archers or lancers would hunt them down, more to relieve the boredom of the march than out of any fear they’d rejoin their army.
We had horses, oxen, half-tame camels from the Rovan deserts, and who knows what. But most of us traveled on foot. Wagons were everything from the emperor’s palatial coach, to ambulances, to supply wagons, to mobile bakeries, to looted carriages, farm carts, and traps.
Under the Rule of Ten the Numantian Army on the march had looked like a city being evacuated. Petre and I had stripped matters to one rule: Everyone who marches fights. No exceptions. But that was too hard, too strenuous, and certainly an officer, especially a ranking one, deserved a few privileges, did he not? So first it was a packhorse, then a wagon, then a small train, and now a rolling madhouse of cooks, bearers, servants, and so on and so forth. I heard that the officers of one regiment had ten horses supposedly to carry their iron rations but which actually transported the regimental wines. I know for a fact — I didn’t discover it until much later — that one general had fifty camels with gear for himself and his aides. Needless to say, none of these luxuries were offered to the rankers.
Only one thing was left of the reformation: We still moved hard, and we still moved fast. We started at dawn, stopped for five minutes every hour, and took a full day’s rest every fifth day. When we halted, an hour before dusk, we took ten-foot-long stakes that we carried with us, each six inches or so in diameter and sharpened on both ends, and built stockades against attack.
We covered four leagues every marching day, and gave no allowances for the occasional ambush. Those who straggled could catch up when we made camp. But all too often they didn’t. Some were taken by the Negaret and partisans harrying our flanks, but more became deserters, hovering on the outskirts, living by their wits and knives. It was these who generally committed the most terrible depredations against the Maisirian peasants. Generally.
Slowly, but very steadily, as steadily as the Wheel turns, we marched south through Maisir.
The Time of Births ended and we were in the Time of Heat. This was hard, dry heat, the heat of the desert, baking down. Dust boiled and hung in the thick, still air. It caked our horses, our bodies, our souls. Those of us in the vanguard weren’t daring so much as we preferred the occasional arrow to choking in the dry, heavy, dust-laden air, seeing nothing but the arse of the man in front of us.
When I rode beyond the main column, I’d see a horseman or six here and there, watching, waiting for a chance to swoop in and cut a throat or rob a wagon. Chase them, and they’d retreat. Chase them too far, and you’d run into an ambush.
It was the Time of Heat, but the weather was strange. It would be bakingly dry, then clouds would flash across the sky and icy rain drench us. Moments later, the rain would stop, and we’d slog through mud until it dried to bricklike hardness, and the dust would float up once more.
The Negaret would mass half a hundred men, and the cavalry would be ready for a counterattack. But the attack would never come. Eventually the cavalry would stand down, only to be shouted to horse the next time a Negaret was seen. Day after day of this, and our horses began dying, drained from never being unsaddled.
Other horses also died because all we could find for fodder was the greenest of rye and harsh grasses. A staple of our diet became roasted or boiled horseflesh. The flankers began looking for either of two herbs — a garliclike root and a low, broad-leafed bush the leaves of which were like searing pepper. Both served to disguise how rotten the meat of our dinner stew was. On our fifth day stops, the army’s bakers labored mightily, but seldom did fresh loaves get completely distributed, especially to the fighting soldiers at the front and flanks of the formation, although imperial headquarters had its share and more.
The sky, impossibly blue or gray, the waiting enemy, and always the suebi, stretched on, beyond the eye’s reach, beyond the mind’s recall. Men became solitary, melancholic, walked beyond the picket fires, and someone would hear a strangled cry. His mates would run out, and find a dying or dead soldier, sword or spear stained with his own blood. As I’d seen before, it was generally the young men who died so readily. Most of the recruits hit this point of despair, but if they had the strength to push through it, or if their squad-mates kept close watch, they’d be on the way to becoming warriors.
As for our sick and wounded, those who could still stumble marched on with their units. No one wanted to go to the ambulance train. Soldiers felt their only chance was staying with their mates. We sent heavily guarded convoys to the rear when we could, and established garrisons in the villages. Too often these tiny garrisons, manned by the sick and halt, would be attacked by partisans who gave no man an easy death.
• • •
One day, the emperor was in a cold rage, and no one, including Domina Othman, could determine why. I eventually found out. A coded, sealed message had come by courier from Nicias. Its contents couldn’t be trusted to the heliograph, but had to be hand-carried.
I only learned of them, and the reply, because I used Tenedos’s code clerk for my own secret commands, and he was like many who deal in cryptic matters: He couldn’t bear not telling at least one person the terrible secrets he held. Since I told no one anything, he frequently confided in me.
The message had come from Kutulu. He notified the emperor that dissidents were newly active in and around the capital, with two former members of the Rule of Ten, Scopas and Barthou, for their leaders. They hadn’t considered active rebellion yet, but were talking about whether the emperor needed a supreme council to take some of the burden of ruling from his shoulders, particularly regarding “commonplace matters” of state. They weren’t a threat thus far, but Kutulu was keeping everyone involved under surveillance.
The emperor, I was told, flew into a grand rage and dispatched a courier within the hour back to Nicias. Kutulu had been warned before to stop coming up with nonexistent conspiracies and worrying about senile dribblers of the past, and to concentrate on the real threat — the Tovieti. Since he’d disobeyed this order again and again, he was relieved from his duties in Nicias. He was ordered to one of the farthest provinces — possibly Chalt, possibly Bala Hissar, my man couldn’t remember exactly — in disgrace.
So while the emperor’s finest were dying in Maisir, another of his best was destroyed for doing no more than his duty. But by doing so, Kutulu might have saved his own life. I don’t know for sure, for I’ve heard nothing more of the man.
• • •
Even the tribunes’ morale was affected by the day-after-day shambling across the suebi. I was surprised to hear Herne, the most politically careful of all the tribunes, express admiration for how skillfully the Maisirians were managing their retreat, almost as if it were a planned campaign. The emperor raged at him, ending with a snarl that if Herne was so impressed by the Maisirians, perhaps he should consider joining them.
Then he stormed out of the mess tent. Herne looked after him quizzically and murmured, “I can only hope our own retreat shall be as well handled.”
Fire-breathing Myrus Le Balafre overheard his comment, and instead of losing his own temper about the tribune’s defeatism, made a wry face and said nothing.
We finally left the loathed suebi for farmland. We were able to find livestock for our dinners, rail fences to tear apart for cooking fires, and, at least for the officers, houses to commandeer for shelter. But with more peasants to despoil, there were more partisans in our wake, and so casualties began mounting.
We paused long enough to cut hay and let it dry for animal fodder, but an army can never halt for long. Within two days, we would consume all provender within two leagues, a day later within four, and so forth, so we were always at the center of a widening circle of desolation.
The sudden rainstorms never ceased, and we wondered if the Maisirians had mastered weather magic, and why our own wizards couldn’t find counterspells.
Then the Maisirians found a new weapon: laying waste to their land as they retreated. Even the green fields of grass were fired, and this could only be done by magic.
Every village would be aflame or have been reduced to blackened waste. But this wasn’t done by magic, but by fierce, determined men and women, who so loved their land they’d destroy it rather than see it held by another. The Maisirians killed what livestock they couldn’t flee with, and spoiled the carcasses with the animals’ own shit. They caved in the wells, except for a few, and those they poisoned. The Chare Brethren were able to counteract some of those poisons, but few of us trusted their magic, so we drank from streams and ponds.
I left the emperor’s tent after a briefing late one night, and it was like day. Ahead of us was blood-red cloud, and flames flared around it. Light shot up in pillars on our flanks, reaching toward the sky, as if the rising lights were columns, supporting the vaults of the heavens.
The soldiers began to dread the Maisirians. They were never sure if the enemy would fight or run, surrender and vow eternal servitude, or smile and cut your throat from the rear. Soldiers must respect and be wary of their foe, or else risk being destroyed through overconfidence. But they must never dread them.
There was also growing respect, for the Maisirians could march on nothing but a handful of grain and a splash of muddy water for day after day, and still fight. When they did fight, they could be incredibly brave. There was the true story of the soldier who’d been badly wounded when his outpost fell to our cavalry. He lay motionless in his own gore for two days, pretending death, never moving, until a supply unit set up its tents around him. He slaughtered fifteen men and women before being cut down.
There were impossible tales of horror: partisan women pretending lust with sharp steel hidden in their bodies; peasants who, when a soldier’s back was turned, changed into wolves or wild oxen.
In revenge, we wreaked horrors on the Maisirians as we went. These weren’t legend, however, but too awfully real.
• • •
The farmland’s end was demarcated by the Anker River. When I’d crossed it, to the west, it had been broad and fairly shallow, with many islets. Here it was deep enough to be navigable, and there was a small port named Irthing. It was about half the size of Penda, and was unburned. I went forward, determined to be with the first elements to enter the town. It seemed deserted, although I could see smoke wisping from chimneys. A messenger came from the emperor saying to be most cautious, for he sensed jeopardy.
I rode with Domina Bikaner, at the head of the Seventeenth Ureyan Lancers, augmented by my Red Lancers. Supporting us was the Twentieth Heavy Cavalry. I planned to strike through the city to the river, take the bridges, which were movable wooden floating structures, and then secure the far shore.
The town was narrow, twisting, cobbled streets with close-leaning buildings and small squares, ideal for ambush — but I didn’t plan to be trapped. We rode into the city at the trot, and funneled, in separate columns, through the winding streets. In my column were the Red Lancers, Domina Bikaner and his command group, plus Sambar and Tiger Troops of the Seventeenth.
I wore a breastplate with an armored right sleeve, an open helm, a small circular shield on my left forearm, the dagger Yonge had given me long ago that had saved my life on many occasions, and a plain double-edged straight sword, plus heavy leather boots with kneepieces. I carried no device, for the only one I wanted was Alegria’s — and I had no symbol of hers but memories.
We were about to cross an empty square when smoke boiled from the road as if the cobbles were lying over a fire. Men shouted, horses whinnied, and no one could see his mate, then the smoke vanished. The square’s far side was blocked with a thick wooden barricade, and the roofs were alive with men and women. Some had bows and spears; others hurled down paving stones. We were trapped as surely as the Tovieti had trapped and obliterated a troop of the Golden Helms during the rising in Nicias.
I seized the bow that was tied to my saddle, hastily strung it, and pulled a shaft from the quiver behind my left leg. An arrow thudded past me and found a target. I spotted the bowman on the roof, and put my arrow into his chest. Arrows and spears clashed against cobbles or struck home, and men and horses screamed. I sent another Maisirian toppling to his death, and then doors crashed open and men charged out, armed with long knives and bills. A Maisirian would fix his hook in a horseman’s clothes, yank him from his mount, and then a knifeman would finish him.
I hung my bow across my cantle and drew my sword. I slashed a reaching bill in half, and with my return stroke took half its owner’s skull away. A knifeman ran at me, trying to gut Brigstock; I kicked his face in and my mount trampled him as he fell. Someone shouted “Tribune,” I automatically ducked, and an arrow hissed past. A second later another shaft struck someone’s armor, bounced free, and fixed itself half an inch deep in my arm. I barely felt the pain; I seized the arrow and pulled it free, ignoring the blood.
More and more Maisirians poured into the square, and I wondered where the hells they were coming from. Then, by purest chance, I saw something. A mislaunched spear flew toward the barricade. But instead of burying itself in the wood, the spear sailed through it. I shouted, “Charge the barricade,” an absurd command, but the Lancers, trained to obey any order, kicked their horses forward.
I prepared to slide from Brigstock and attack that obviously magical block, for none of the horses would rush it, but I didn’t have to. Like the smoke, the high gate shivered, then was gone, and our way was clear. We went out of the square at a gallop, and I spotted a man on a rooftop, his arms moving as he chanted. I went for my bow, but Curti was quicker and his aim far better, and a long gray arrow grew between the Maisirian wizard’s ribs. He shouted agony and reached for it with one hand, but was dead before his fingers touched the feathered shaft.
We entered another larger square, and I shouted for Bikaner to order a halt. “To the rooftops,” I shouted. “Kill anyone who’s not of us.” Doors were bashed down, and archers clattered up the stairs onto the flat roofs. From the heights it was easy to see our enemies, and arrows went out, and partisans — and the occasional magician — fell.
We went back the way we’d come, taking the city building by building. We weren’t infantrymen, but my arrogance in wanting to be the first to conquer this pissant little city had forced us to be like them. Guards and other infantry units found us, and then the battle became easier. But it was still house by house, street by street. It wasn’t as grim as some city fighting I’d known, but it was bad.
Irthing was ours by nightfall, but the battle had cost the Seventeenth Lancers almost two hundred dead, nearly half of their already-reduced strength. Among them was Manych, another of the brave soldiers who’d gone over the mountains to Jarrah with me. That burned worse than the arrow that had scored my chest.
We didn’t tarry in Irthing, and that was a blessing, for the last elements of the army had no sooner crossed the Anker when a storm rose. Wind waves tore at the bridges, and the river rose as if it were heavy with the spring melt. If they’d been laden with our soldiery, the bridges could well have been torn from the banks, and the losses would’ve been terrible. Maisirian magic was great, but this time it was too slow.
• • •
We stopped on the far side of the Anker, in a great meadow, to rebuild and rest, for ahead were the feared Kiot Marshes. I’d just finished sacrificing in Manych’s name, praying to Saionji to grant him a good next life, for he’d been a good warrior, when Yonge came with an idea.
I cursed for not seeing what he had, and told Yonge we must take this to the emperor at once. Yonge didn’t have a ready speech — he was a fighter, not a diplomat. Nor was he a theoretician like Mercia Petre. But his enthusiasm flamed high as he spoke. He became so aroused that, without permission, he took a glass from a table, poured himself a brandy from the emperor’s own decanter, and chased it with another glass.
The emperor should declare all Maisirians free. Free the peasant from his land-slavery to his lord, free the aristocrat from his generations-old debts to his king. Give them the right to become Numantians, to own their own land, to leave the land for the cities if they wished. Let them take up any trade they wished. Tell the women they didn’t have to stay in a marriage unless they wanted to. Proclaim that no one had any privilege other than that granted by his new lord, the Emperor Laish Tenedos.
“That’ll bring them in,” Yonge said. “Then let them join the army. Hells, even levy them in. Bairan does that, so they’re used to it and won’t object much. That’ll help get rid of those gods-damned bandits that are eating our ass alive, and build up our forces as well. We can go after the partisans that’re left with their own countrymen, who know their hiding places better than we do.
“I can testify the Maisirians’ll fight well for us, for I’ve been salting them in with my skirmishers, using hunters, trappers, and the like, and I like them well enough, as long as you don’t let them knot up, and remember they’re being a little traitorous. Seems to me this is an everybody-wins-but-the-Maisirians sort of thing. Sir.”
He beamed at the emperor, expecting to be praised to the skies. Instead, Tenedos just stared. He turned to me. “Since you’ve already heard this proposal, obviously you endorse it.”
“Of course, Your Majesty. Yonge didn’t mention one advantage I saw. It seems to me if you declared freedom for the peasantry, their army’d melt away. Once we take Jarrah, that’d mean Maisir would be ours in perpetuity. They’d have good reason to remain loyal to you. It wouldn’t be one of those always-rebelling states like, well, like Kallio.”
“I see.” The emperor stood. “Are you two quite mad?”
“I beg your pardon, Highness?”
“I spoke quite clearly. Do you realize what would happen if I were idiot enough to do what you suggest? There would be instant chaos throughout Maisir. No laws, no rules, no one to obey.”
“Fine,” Yonge said with enthusiasm. “That’ll give their army and their king something to occupy their time with besides us.”
“Anarchy,” Tenedos said again, this time in a hiss like a serpent’s. “Once a country falls into chaos, who can say whether it can be brought back? Obviously neither of you realize how closely run the civil war was, with the Tovieti and Chardin Sher behind it. I — we — almost lost everything!
“Now you propose we cast the die again, with the smug hope that everything will somehow come out all right. Do you two happen to remember that the Tovieti are active in Maisir, as well? Don’t you think this piece of imbecility would encourage them? And what would it do to certain classes back in Numantia? Don’t you think such a proclamation would stir them up again? We could well have another rebellion at home, while we’re fighting in this terrible country. I have no urge at all to suddenly wear a yellow silk cord around my neck.
“I didn’t think either of you were fools. I’m not at all sure of that anymore. Now, leave me. And do not ever mention that idea to anyone again, on pain of facing my wrath and most severe punishment. Go!”
Yonge walked out. I came to attention and saluted before leaving. The emperor didn’t return it.
Yonge waited outside the tent. I expected him to be blind with rage, knowing his hillman’s temper. I was more than slightly angry myself. But Yonge was pale with what could only be fear, and I’d thought that emotion completely unknown to the Kaiti.
“What’s the matter?”
“Not here. Come.”
He led me to a spot on a low knoll, away from the camp, where the only men we could see were two sentries on their rounds several dozen yards distant.
“I’m sorry for what the emperor said,” I began. “He was wrong. I still think your plan is — ”
Yonge waved his hand. “Forget about my idea. The emperor will one day learn that a man who readily calls another a fool is generally staring into his own pier glass. Numantian, we are in desperate trouble.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“I’m no sorcerer or priest,” Yonge said. “But let me ask you something: The emperor has said, often, that he serves Saionji, has he not? Goddess of chaos, correct?”
“Chaos, war, the Wheel, rebirth.”
“But mostly death and destruction, eh?”
“Yes,” I said.
“He’s said that it’s necessary to destroy before you can rebuild, hasn’t he?”
I nodded.
“I think it’s pretty obvious he’s served his goddess well. Now he’s told us he fears chaos, did he not? What do you think Saionji is thinking, if she exists, if she heard those words? What does she think of her finest servant now, eh?”
I never claimed to be much of a believer, nor a student of theology, but a sudden chill of fear struck me and, involuntarily, I glanced up at the dark, distant heavens.
“Curse chaos, curse the goddess,” Yonge said. “I think we just heard Saionji’s servant declare his own freedom, declare he’s no longer her vassal, without ever realizing what he said. Don’t you think she’ll seek revenge, revenge as great as her rewards were?”
“Come on, Yonge,” I tried. “The gods are distant, and seldom hear the stupidities of man.”
“Perhaps,” Yonge said. “Or perhaps we just heard our doom being prophesied.”
“That’s enough,” I said, a bit testily. “Besides, what is there to do about it?”
“If I’m right, only three things. One I will not speak of, for I am not prepared to offer violence to a man I swore an oath to. Not yet, anyway. The other is to leave the service of this madman who thinks he can dictate to the gods.”
“Nice choices,” I said, trying not to show shock at how casually Yonge could talk of royal assassination. “And the third?”
“You can come watch me get drunk, Cimabuean. Drunk and dangerous. And if you were anything but the fool the emperor has named you, after what we’ve heard, you’d be the first to empty the bottle.”
• • •
When I woke the next morning, it was if I’d not slept at all, for Yonge’s words had made me remember what that magician who’d called himself the Speaker had said, long ago as we left his village with the colossal temple, high in the mountains between Numantia and Maisir: The god you think you serve, you do not serve. The goddess you fear is not the one who is your enemy, but your enemy is one who seeks to become more, to become a god, yet, in the end, shall be no more than a demon, for demons are already his true masters.
I pondered that man’s words, trying to put meanings to them: The god I thought I served? Irisu? Isa the War God? But he is no more than a manifestation of Saionji. Was Saionji the goddess I feared that he spoke of? That made sense. So then who was my enemy? King Bairan? Hardly.
There could only be one answer: the emperor himself. I could well believe he sought to become a god. But my enemy? No, that I couldn’t believe, in spite of the wrongs he’d done me. And that he served a demon or demons? In spite of Yonge’s words, I doubted if he’d forsaken Saionji, or been forsaken by her.
In fact, could it be that he himself was a manifestation of Saionji? Just as Death, with her skull, swords, and pale horse, was a manifestation of the destroyer and creator goddess? Certainly he — and I — had sent enough people to the Wheel for Saionji to remember us well.
But the man I served a direct manifestation of that nightmare? The terrible thought brought me sitting up and completely awake. I shivered and once again reminded myself of my oath.
But as I got off my cot and went to my canvas wash basin, the Speaker’s final words still rang: Serve who you may, serve who you might, you serve but one, and that one will grant you naught.
• • •
We moved into the Kiot Marshes on the last day of the Time of Heat. We could’ve cut due west and then marched along the traditional trading route to Jarrah, but we would’ve faced more suebi, and Tenedos was very aware of the corrosive effect the desolation had on our soldiers.
The emperor had used magic to discover where the marshes narrowed above Irthing. It would take no more than a week to reach the forests that bordered Jarrah, and the city was another week’s march away, according to our rather unreliable maps. Finally, the emperor reasoned that since the marshes were as ominous to the Maisirians, we would be on equal ground there. After the army splashed into the mire, several people wondered, What ground?
There were roads — not much more than paths through the wasteland — but not many. Most were animal-made, but the better ones we thought had been made by the marsh people. Prisoners had told us the same thing Shamb Philaret had said: Those who lived in the Kiot never acknowledged King Bairan. So we hoped there’d be less trouble with partisans.
The emperor issued orders that the people of the marshes were to be treated as prospective allies, not looted or molested. This got a wry smile from Yonge and laughter from most of the other officers, who couldn’t imagine a Numantian soldier confronted with a fat pullet or its mistress and merely smiling and touching his helmet. But the marsh people were, in fact, left mostly alone after the first time we encountered one of their villages.
I was riding behind the forward cavalry screen when our advance stopped. I went ahead with the Red Lancers to investigate. I found half a regiment of horsemen, with a milling crowd of Guardsmen behind, and a wide fen. In its center was an unwalled village of two dozen long thatch-roofed huts — each two-storied — with a roofed, raised platform in the middle. I saw a scattering of pigs and chickens rooting about, but no humans. “What’s the problem?” I asked the domina in charge of the cavalry. I noticed that he, and five or more of his men, were soaking wet, even though the day was dry, if overcast and gray. “What’s holding up the advance?”
“We came on this village, and started to ride into it,” the domina explained a bit sheepishly. “None of my scouts could find a path, so we rode directly forward.”
“And started sinking,” I added. “I assume no one drowned.”
“No, sir. But we were well and truly stuck. Had to be dragged out with ropes, sir. I sent other scouts to find the path into the village, so we could, er, negotiate for supplies.”
“I see.” I wondered if we should skirt the village, but curiosity suggested otherwise. Besides, I rationalized, it would be well for me to know these people, since we’d be encountering others like them.
A figure came out of one hut. He was not tall, but very very heavy, waddling as he came. He carried a carved wand under one arm, had a dagger sheathed at his belt, and wore a loincloth and what looked like the remains of a Maisirian officer’s tunic. Atop that he had on some strange sort of armor that, the closer he got, looked more and more like the tanned and sewn-together scales of some enormous snake or crocodile. I wondered if he was drunk, for he went hither and thither across the swampland, from one grassy hummock to another, then, sometimes, walking across open water.
He stopped when he was two long spear-casts distant, and stared for a very long time. Finally he cupped his hands and shouted in accented Maisirian: “Go away.”
I dismounted and walked to the edge of the swamp, and shouted back that we were not Maisirians, but their enemies, and wished to speak of peace, since we had heard that the people of the marsh had no use for Maisirians, and the enemy of our enemy was our friend.
The response came back: “Go away.”
“That is impossible.”
The fat man stared for a while longer, then, without saying more, walked back to his hut, using the same erratic path as before. He disappeared into his hut, and further shouts brought no other signs of life.
“Yes, sir?” the domina asked. He was keeping his lips quite firm, but I heard buried laughter from the ranks.
I thought I had the situation in hand. “The reason he thinks he’s safe,” I said, “is that the way to his village is under water. It zigs and zags and unless you’re familiar with the path, you’ll go over your head.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I was watching where he put his feet,” I said. “Put men out on line. Swimmers all. Have other men behind them with ropes. Walk forward until you find the beginnings of the path. Once we find that, I’ll lead us into the village, and we’ll see what song he wishes to sing.”
“Yes, sir.”
And so it was done and, after a very wet, very muddy hour, the beginnings of the path were found. Men paced ahead carefully, probing with saplings, and it was as I said — there was a path just under the water, graveled and wide enough for four men to walk abreast. We put stakes on either side of the path so we wouldn’t lose it, and eventually it wound to where the man had stood.
“Very well,” I said. “Svalbard … Curti … Domina, give me half a dozen other men. Behind me.” I splashed forward, with perhaps five hundred or so soldiers watching. I felt a bit foolish, but remembered that a leader had to be willing to wade in the shit as well as ride in the parades. Without mishap we made it to where the track ended.
“Very good,” I said, feeling confident. “Now, he was standing here, and when he left, he went …”
And four paces forward I went into water well over my head. I surfaced, spluttering, and Svalbard hauled me back to the path. There was real laughter from the bank.
“Let me try, sir,” and the big man waded out in a different direction and promptly stuck himself in quicksand. It took Curti and another soldier to drag him free. After that, I was willing to be a little less a leader, and let others probe for the path. Another hour, and we still hadn’t found it.
I saw a galloper back at the bank, and the domina waving, and knew the messenger was from the emperor, who was wondering what the hells was holding up the advance. Very well, I decided. These marsh people could have their gods-damned swamp and piss on ‘em. I went back to shore and ordered the march to continue, avoiding the village.
As we moved away, I swear I could hear laughter echoing across the dismal waters from the village.
• • •
The Time of Rains began, and travel was as it had been a year ago — a good day was when it only drizzled, and a bad one when you couldn’t see your squad leader through the downpour. The rivers and creeks rose, and the way was always muddy.
One night, the army was waiting for our pioneers to throw bridges across a swollen river, when a galloper found me and said the emperor wondered if I cared to dine with him at the headquarters of Tribune Aguin Guil. I said I’d be more than delighted and, as dusk rose, rode back to Guil’s headquarters.
He had pitched a huge pavilion that must’ve taken half a dozen carts to carry, and great fires roared around it. Magic must have dried the wood, for I hadn’t been able to build more than a smoldering smudge pot for four days, and had had no hot food for the same time. I licked my lips, smelling wonderful odors — of roast beef, freshly baked bread, and spices. Quite suddenly fatigue slammed me, and I felt like what I was — a very wet, very hungry soldier, not a little discouraged and feeling near the end of his rope.
I saw servants wearing fresh, clean, dry uniforms, laying out plates on linen-clad tables, and the plates winked gold reflections of the crystal lamps hanging above the comfortable chairs. I heard laughter, some of it women’s, and the clinking of glasses, and I saw the emperor’s carriage drawn up outside.
I reined Brigstock in and slid from the saddle. A man came up and saluted. He wore a legate’s sash. When tribunes entertain emperors, horsemen or even lances are too low-ranking to be horse holders.
“Tribune á Cimabue. The emperor is delighted you were able to make an appearance.”
“Not nearly as delighted as I am,” I said, and started toward the pavilion. I turned back to the legate, to ask if it was possible to find some grain for Brigstock, and saw, just at the fringes of the firelight, twenty or so men. They were all footsoldiers, none with a higher rank than private or axman, and all were wet, ragged, and dirty. Their beards and hair looked as if they’d been plucked from scarecrows. None of the men appeared to have eaten for a day or more. All that was clean about them was their swords and spears.
I knew all of them, for these were the men who’d followed me from the terrible retreat at Sayana through the ghastliness of the Tovieti suppression and the Kallian campaign. After that they’d been with me in a hundred nameless skirmishes and confrontations on our borders. They were slovenly, crude, mostly uneducated. They smelled and swore and couldn’t be trusted around taverns or bordellos.
But they’d always been there, and when I’d ordered them forward they’d cursed me for a murdering son of a bitch — and gone. Men from their ranks died as often as not, sometimes screaming, sometimes quietly, sometimes with a rough jest on their lips.
Now they stared at that golden pavilion, faces quite blank.
I walked back to the legate.
“Sir?” His expression was a little fearful, as if the first tribune had found him doing something wrong.
“Those men there?”
“Yessir?”
“Were they there when the emperor arrived?”
“I don’t know, sir. I suppose so.”
“Did he see them?”
“I couldn’t say, sir.”
He glanced over at the ragged warriors. “Is there something wrong, sir? Should I order them away?”
“No. But you might be good enough to tell the emperor I was called away on urgent business. Be sure and extend my apologies.”
I no longer felt the rain, or my creaking bones. I remounted, and rode back forward, and spent the rest of the night with the pioneers, up to my chest in icy currents, lashing together crudely cut logs.
At dawn, someone gave me a cup of barely warm tea and a scrap of bread, and I found it a banquet. I mounted Brigstock and rode across the creaking bridge, shouting for the army to move out.
• • •
The marshes never stopped; they just slowly grew shallower and dryer, and there were more hummocks and trees growing from solid ground. Now we were in the Belaya Forest, and a vast feeling of relief ran through the ranks that the worst was over. At last we could see, through the light rain — actually more of a mist — the ground rise toward a series of rolling almost-foothills. The army was marching toward them on a series of tiny peninsulas that wound together. To our left and right — west and east — was the last of the swamp. We quickened our pace, wanting dry feet, dry fodder, and the chance to build a fire on the rising ground ahead.
Our last elements were clearing the fingers when the Maisirian army attacked from the marsh.
Their magicians laid spells of confusion, of indifference, of a kind of invisibility, so no one would trouble about what lay to the west, believing, without ever investigating, that there was nothing but mud and dankness. There the Maisirians had concealed themselves and waited.
They charged without even a signal and surged out of the swamp, ululating battle cries as they came.
They should’ve left us room for panicked flight. If the ground to the right had been forest or suebi, the troops might have broken. But with swamp on all sides except the front, there was nowhere to run.
The Maisirians still hadn’t learned that our army marched with fighting men scattered throughout the column, so they weren’t hitting just support units. After they’d butchered the stragglers and hangers-on, they slammed into corps led by Mercia Petre and Myrus Le Balafre.
These two reacted instantly, calmly if loudly, ordering all elements to turn left and prepare for the attack. Their officers and warrants bellowed terrible punishments for anyone who didn’t kill his Maisirian or six, and Saionji herself help the one who hesitated or dreamed of flight. The truth of the training was there: Make a soldier more afraid of his leaders than the enemy, and he’ll fight hard and long.
There was also a rage, long-buried, simmering, that the Maisirians wouldn’t stand and fight, but keep on with their endless back-stabbing. Now they were before us in the open, and we wanted blood.
The column turned on its left flank and went on line. Supply and other “soft” units were shouted to the right, to the new rear. I won’t pretend all this happened smoothly, or even happened in all columns. But there were enough soldiers who’d dropped their packs and had swords ready, and enough archers who’d grabbed a handful of shafts from quivers and sent them arcing toward the enemy, to stop the Maisirian first wave.
Before the second wave could attack through the hesitating first, other soldiers seized the stakes carried below our wagons for the bivouac stockades, and rammed them into the soft ground, angled toward the enemy. Then the second wave slammed into our lines.
I was well forward with the Twentieth Heavy Cavalry, the emperor’s carriage not far behind me, when a rider galloped up — although I’d already guessed what must be happening from the din.
Officers were shouting orders, and men were shrugging off packs and knocking bedrolls off their horses, lances and swords coming into their hands.
I slid from the mare I’d been riding, to mount the already-saddled Brigstock. I kicked him into a gallop, back to the emperor’s carriage. Tenedos had his wagons drawn into a circle, his bodyguard dismounted and ringing the site. He was ordering robed Brethren about, and the area was a scurry of staff officers and acolytes. An acolyte was sprinkling colored powder on the wet grass in arcane patterns, since there was no other way to mark the meadowland, and braziers were being lit. Magicians were ordering herbs mixed and dumped into the braziers, and unrolling bundles and sorting through their contents.
“Damastes, take charge of the cavalry,” the emperor ordered. His voice was completely calm. “Take ‘em out and try to hit these bastards on their flank. I’m going to bother them a bit myself. I’ve already sent reinforcements back down the line to Le Balafre and Petre.”
I saluted, and rode Brigstock back to the Twentieth. My gallopers and the Red Lancers were waiting. I sent quick commands to the dominas commanding the screen on the army’s former front: We’d march out to the right, then swing back to the fighting. After we turned, we’d go on line and take them. At the walk, we moved out.
I felt a sort of shimmering, a crawl and shiver on my muscles and nerves. Magic was about. The emperor’s spell was being cast. I was on the fringes, and saw trees and vines twist and lean, and felt malevolence, until we were “recognized” as friendly. This was the spell Tenedos had cast against Chardin Sher’s army, in the forest around the village of Dabormida. I’d thanked Tanis back then that I hadn’t witnessed such an evil. But now I would. The trees would come alive and reach for their foes. Branches would strangle, trees would fall and crush, roots would rise to trip and tear. Men would go mad in this horror, seeing things that must not be, and run screaming, to be crushed by another terror or cut down by the oncoming soldiers.
The trees were moving, coming alive, as if a gale were twisting them, but there was no wind and the rain fell straight from the sky. Men turned, looked at me, and their faces were white, afraid. I pretended laughter and shouted something about the emperor’s magic striking hard, and they forced courage. Then the crawling sensation was gone, and all was normal. I didn’t know what had happened, but logic said the Maisirian wizards had broken Tenedos’s spell.
Now it would be their turn, unless the emperor could rebuild his power quickly. He wasn’t quite fast enough, and red splashes flickered through the rain. It was as if fireflies were attacking, or perhaps those tiny redbirds that flocked through Cimabue’s jungles in the Time of Births. Then they were on us, and they weren’t anything sensate or friendly, but bits of pure flame, straight from Shahriya’s realm, unquenched by rain, drawing close. They found, clung, and flared, and screams began.
One touched my forearm, and a fiery brand seared. The flame grew bigger, feeding on me, on my energy, and my mind reeled in agony and fear, remembering that greater fire I’d flung myself into not long ago. My other hand scrabbled at my waist, and Yonge’s dagger was in it. I scraped frantically, and the flame fell away, and the pain was gone, though my sleeve was scorched through. At first I thought it was the silver of the knife’s pommel and hilt, but then I realized I’d touched the flame with bare steel.
Other men made the same discovery, and scraped swords, knives, even arrowheads across the tiny killers, and they vanished. But there were those who hadn’t been quick enough, or who panicked. Their bodies became flame, and they fell, writhing, and were dead. Horses reared, neighing in terror and pain as they burned. The formations nearly broke, and then the flames were gone, as if the rain instead of a counterspell had quenched them.
The emperor sent an order down the line for Le Balafre and Petre to attack. But those two hadn’t needed orders, knowing as they did that the best counterattack is immediate, and the best way to break an ambush is straight into it. The two tribunes were the first to charge, swords high, beside their banners. Our men shouted loud for Numantia, and attacked.
They cut down the second wave and the remnants of the first wave, and moved on, lines wavering, then firming, rain washing blood from their spears and swords as they rolled inexorably toward the Maisirian lines.
Now it was time for me to put my cavalry on line, strike for the Maisirian left flank, and rip them apart. Except that …
I make no claims to having the slightest ability in magic or any sense beyond a normal man’s. So perhaps I heard something, far distant. Or possibly there might’ve been the gleam of armor, or a flag, or even a fire.
But I found myself staring to my right, away from the Maisirian lines, toward that tempting, rolling high ground we’d been hurrying for. A fine place to camp. Or mount an attack from, using the slope to add weight to the charge. And I’d seen no Maisirian cavalry other than outriders …
I called for my gallopers and snapped orders. Some goggled, and I shouted “Yes, yes,” and said “Now, ride out, damn your eyes” and they obeyed. Tribune Safdur, nominally in charge of the cavalry, gaped, but said nothing. I sent two of my staff officers back to the army, one to tell the emperor of my stupidity and disobedience, the other asking Linerges, commanding the corps just behind mine, to attack with us.
Slowly the great mass of the Numantian cavalry swung right, away from the Maisirian attack, toward the high ground, as stupid a thing as I’ve ever done, and so I signaled for the trot. Bugles rang, and the monstrous mailed fist reached out. I kicked Brigstock to the gallop, and we swept through the flankers until we were at the cavalry’s head, my Red Lancers close behind.
Men and horses one tempered weapon, we hurtled up the gentle slope, over its crest, into the Maisirian cavalry. They were drawn up, waiting to make their surprise attack as we smashed into their flank as a lance rips into a soldier’s unarmored side. They tried to turn, but were too slow, and we shattered them as a hammer smashes crystal.
A man swung a morningstar, and I let the weapon’s chain wrap around my lance, then yanked it from his grip. He flailed, not knowing what to do next, and Curd killed him. I threw the now-useless lance into another Maisirian’s face, and let Svalbard finish him. I had my sword in one hand, Yonge’s long dagger in the other, as I parried a sword stroke, swung at my attacker, missed, and he vanished into the fray.
A spear darted toward my face. I flinched away, and the spearman grew an arrow from his eye and went down. A riderless horse pawed at Brigstock, and he screamed and smashed the animal with an iron shoe, as I gutted a man running at me swinging a sword over his head. There were two men attacking me, getting in each other’s way, swearing at each other, and I put my blade in one’s stomach and let him roll back, screaming, into his fellow, then slashed that man’s thigh open and he lost interest in me.
The battle went on … and on … and we broke their lines, reformed, came back, and again butchered our way through their ranks. I looked for banners that might mark King Bairan or, better yet, the azaz, hoping to find an easy way to end this battle, this war, letting red anger touch me, but I saw nothing.
I saw fifty men on identical white stallions, all wearing black, with a yellow banner at their head. At their head was an armored man with an open helm. I recognized him, Rauri Rewald, commander of their cavalry, whom I’d met in Jarrah, and he knew me at the same instant, and we cried orders that were the same:
“Take that man!”
“Kill him!”
My Red Lancers and his bodyguard surged together, and all was demoniac madness. A man slashed at my leg, and I felt a bit of pain, saw a bit of blood as I slashed and his sword — and arm — went spinning into the air, and then I forgot about him.
Another Maisirian reeled from some unseen blow, and I smashed my blade into his helmet and sent him tumbling. I may have killed another man, perhaps two, maybe three, but I don’t remember precisely.
I do remember the sudden open space in this roiling slaughter, with no one in it but Rewald on his prancing white horse and myself. Rewald’s two-handed sword struck, and I knocked it away, and then chanced a thrust that clanged harmlessly against his breastplate. He swung with all his might, and my arm went numb as I took his power on my shield.
He opened his mouth to shout something, no doubt a great challenge to ring down the years, and I had no reply but a darting thrust that took him in the face and went up into his brain, through his skull, sent his helmet spinning away. His eyes gaped, then he fell away, off my blade, and I heard a great wailing.
But his men didn’t stop fighting. The swirl of their death went on, and on, and then there were blood-drenched horses pawing in death, and piled, black-armored bodies moaning as they tried to deny Saionji’s summons. But all too many of my Lancers were down as well. I gasped for air, not remembering having breathed for hours, days, and saw, across the bloody field, weapons being flung down, riders galloping away, men holding their hands up in surrender, and I realized we’d taken the field.
Then the emperor’s final spell was sent against the Maisirians in the swamps. No Numantian knew what to make of it for an instant, but the Maisirians appeared to have gone mad, suddenly swinging at nothing, clawing at their eyes, screaming in pain, having no mind for war — and then our soldiers cut into them.
The spell was simple, nothing more than deerflies. Of a sort. Deerflies that were invisible, whose bites burned like the Maisirian fire, whose searing agony shattered a fighter’s thoughts — and let his attacker end the contest. The magic lasted for brief seconds, but that was enough. The wavering Maisirian line broke, and soldiers in their thousands were surrendering or fleeing.
We’d finally met the Maisirian army, and shattered it. But there was no formal surrender. Nothing came from king Bairan, nothing from the jedaz, the leaders of his army. The remains of the Maisirian army fled north once more.
But the emperor was content. “We have them,” he said. “Their king can’t allow this war to continue. Not after this.” Then he said something strange. “And the price has been met. Now the power is on my side. Now the way is open to Jarrah.”
But the cost was terrible. Almost thirty thousand of our finest — infantry, cavalry, skirmishers — were dead, dying, or desperately injured on this nameless field. Our sorcerers and chirurgeons did what they could to help the wounded, but all too often there was nothing but a moment’s prayer and finding a bit of cloth to lay across newly empty eyes. Among the dead were Mercia Petre and his aide, Phillack Herton, who I truly hope had been more than just a companion and servant, had given my friend love.
That night, we built pyres and sacrificed.
I watched the fires rage and remembered Mercia, that unemotional, dry, sometimes slovenly man, whose only life was the army.
There was a man beside me, and I saw that it was Le Balafre. His leg was bandaged, and he had his arm in a sling. He stared long at Petre’s flaming memorial, then said, so quietly I barely heard his words:
“It was a good death. Our kind of death.” Then he walked away, into darkness.
The way was open to Jarrah.