In the grayness and almost still air before dawn, Secca and Richina—and Wilten, Stepan, Haddev, and the two chief players—looked out from the high ridge at the fog below. That fog had begun to thin enough that the higher ground, such as the tree-lined rise below, was intermittently visible, although the hillside opposite them, more than a dek away, remained swathed in the heavy gray mist.
Haddev glanced at Richina, then at Secca. Richina did not look at the heir to Synek.
“If…if the wind blows away the fog…” Secca glanced to Stepan, “can we take that rise there quickly?” She gestured.
“It is closer to us than to them. If they are not waiting…” Stepan shrugged.
“The glass shows that they remain in their encampment,” Secca replied.
“That is lower than their camp, but it is the highest ground. We could charge from there if they tried to attack.” Stepan looked at Secca. “Your players will need to be ready to play.”
“They can play a spell here, and then remount and ride down,” Palian affirmed. “It will not take long.”
Delvor just nodded at Palian’s words, then brushed back the lank brown hair that always seemed to fall across his face. His eyes were clouded, Secca noted, as if he were considering a fingering, or a chord progression, the way he did before he came up with something new for his lutarists.
“There is little fog on this side of the ridge,” Stepan said. “Will it harm us or disrupt your spell if we begin to ride down?”
“No. It could get windy, but that’s all.”
“Wind we will take, if we can gain position.” Stepan glanced at Haddev. “If you would use your lancers to guard the sorceress and the players?”
“That we can do.” Haddev nodded, then turned his mount back toward the black-clad lancers of Silberfels.
“We will follow Stepan, if you will permit,” added Wilten. “We can offer greater protection if we are well before you.”
“Thank you, Wilten.” Secca offered a smile she did not feel and dismounted, handing the gray’s reins to Achar. She cleared her throat, then stepped forward to the most open point of the ridge.
“Dismount and quick-tune!” commanded Palian as she dismounted, and then unstrapped her violino from behind her mount.
“Dismount…” followed the order from Delvor.
The first players formed a core, and the second players drew up in an arc around them.
Only the faintest hint of a breeze flowed from behind Secca, scarcely enough to matter, one way or the other. The vagrant breeze died away even as she began a quick vocalise.
Behind her rose the sounds of tuning. To her left, the double column of riders began to angle down a narrow way that was more animal track than trail.
When Secca finished the first vocalise, Richina extended a water bottle.
“Thank you.” Secca took a swallow, then glanced at Palian.
“We stand ready, lady.”
Secca glanced across the valley, then at the lancers descending. All she could see moving were her forces. She looked back at Palian and nodded.
“Prepare to play. The second building spell,” commanded the chief player.
“Prepare to play,” echoed Delvor. “The massed harmony for the building spell.”
The first bars of the accompaniment echoed out past Secca, somehow almost eerily in the lightening gray that preceded dawn, and then it was time to sing the spell, against the bright melody and the deeper chords of the heavy lutars of the second players.
“Bring us wind both fierce and strong,
to sweep this fog to the south along…”
A low grumbling reverberated from the ground, then passed, even before Secca was well into the words, but the sky began to darken immediately, and the wind began to build behind Secca’s back.
Within moments, the light gray of the sky had turned blackish, and the wind was whipping Secca’s jacket around her and her hair against her forehead and cheeks. The gusts of wind, ever growing, seemed to rip at the gray fog in the lowlands below, tearing chunks away. A faint pink-orange light began to creep from behind the trees to the southeast.
Secca stood there for a moment, half-amazed that the spell had worked. It should have, for it was pure Clearsong, but she had not known if it would.
“Lady,” suggested Richina, “we need to ride.”
Secca shook her head and turned to Achar, taking the gray’s reins from the young lancer and mounting.
As Secca settled herself in the saddle, Richina extended a chunk of bread and a wedge of cheese. “Eat as you ride.”
Secca took the bread and cheese.
“Players!” ordered Palian. “Remount and ride! Follow the sorceress.”
“Silberfels!” came Haddev’s order above the sound of the still-rising wind. “Follow the players! Blades at the ready. Watch the sides of the trail.”
Secca and Richina were almost at the head of the second column, with only Achar and Dymen riding before them on the trail that angled downward. The wind was cold, and it half-moaned, half-howled around Secca’s ears as she rode and tried to chew and swallow the dry bread and hard cheese.
Once in the birches and firs, Secca could only catch glimpses of Stepan’s and Wilten’s lancers. She swallowed, hoping that she could reach the rise on the far side of the valley before the Sturinnese could gather. The descent seemed to take a glass or more, with the wind moaning and howling and misty fog shreds obscuring her view, and then passing, with yet another segment of the disintegrating fog bank taking the place of the last…and again passing.
By the time she had finished the bread and cheese, the section of the trail which she followed had eased into a gentler decline, and most of the fog seemed to have cleared from the valley.
“It’s longer than it looked,” said Richina quietly.
“Yes.” Too much longer, thought the older sorceress. “We’ll have to hurry when we get to the rise.”
As soon as Secca was out of the trees and on the grassy flat, she urged the gray forward, into a quick trot. She didn’t need to be caught on low ground. Neither did the players.
As she rode, she swallowed again. She hadn’t realized just how much lower the valley was. Yet…if she turned, she’d be abandoning Stepan and Wilten and their lancers. Better that she do her best from the low rise ahead. Changing even a poor plan in midstream would probably be worse than carrying it out. That’s what you hope, she told herself.
A glance to the south showed no Sturinnese…not yet.
As she rode up the gentle slope onto the rise, running through a vocalise to keep her voice ready, Secca could see that the entire north slope of the hill she faced was nearly bare of the concealing fog. She could also see movement at the top of the hill, figures in white, she thought, although the firs obscured any clear images.
A series of trumpet commands rang out from the south, echoing off the ridge behind the Defalkan and Ebran forces.
Secca glanced around the ridge, then turned in the saddle, looking back at Palian, before gesturing. “The knoll there. Set up and ready the players.”
Stepan had clearly marked the area, because his lancers had left a semicircle there, and a clear path.
The sorceress reined up the gray and swung down out of the saddle, walking quickly onto the slightly higher ground on the south side of the rise.
A dull rumbling rose, and then died away.
“Dismount! Quick-tune!” Palian’s voice cut through the morning air.
The players reined up, and at that moment, the sun seemed to rise over the eastern side of the valley, flooding it with an orange light. The last shreds of fog rose into the sky, dark blots that thinned and then vanished.
White specks appeared among the birch trunks, white splotches that moved downhill, almost like a breaking wave.
“They are less than a half a dek away, lady,” Stepan called.
Secca shook her head, forcing her thoughts back to what needed to be done, calling up the spell she needed to use.
The quick sounds of tuning died away, and the red-haired sorceress turned toward Palian.
“We stand ready.”
Secca looked back to the south, where two hundred or so yards of brown grass separated the bottom of the rise where she and her forces waited from the trees on the north slope of the hill held by the Sturinnese. The brown meadow remained empty of lancers or mounts.
Secca waited.
The fog had vanished, but wind was lighter, as if the effects of her spell had died away.
Another series of trumpet calls issued into morning air from the south, then echoed from the hillside behind the players and the lancers. Mounts whuffed, and someone coughed, but the air became even more still. The brown meadow to the south of the rise remained vacant.
Secca swallowed, still waiting.
Abruptly, like a thunderclap, the roll of drums began, a triplet of trumpet notes sang forth, and a sea of white-clad lancers charged from the trees, forming into four wedges as they galloped toward Secca.
Secca swallowed, then ordered, “The arrow spell!” She shouted to Elfens. “Make ready with your shafts!”
“The arrow spell!” echoed Palian. “Mark!”
“Stand ready to nock arrows!” Elfens’ voice trumpeted over the howling moan of the winds.
“The arrow spell! At my mark…” ordered Palian. “Mark!”
Singing as strongly as she could, yet trying to be open and not to force her voice, fighting the urge to push and strain against the thunder-drums, the spells they carried, and the wind, Secca sang the spell.
“Heads of arrows, shot into the air,
strike the drumskins, straight through there,
rend the drums and those who play…”
Even toward the end of the spell, strong as her voice felt, she could hear and feel the pressure of the thunder-drums, a pressure that tried to contain, to push back the impacts of her words and the music of her players. With that pressure came a strong wind, blowing out of the south, carrying the scent of damp and moldy meadow grass to Secca, a wind seemingly directed at her, grit flaying her face and eyes.
As she finished, she watched open-mouthed as more than half the heavy arrows curved, fighting against the wind, and perhaps against sorcery, before diving into the damp grasses of the meadow near the woods.
There was a lessening of the drums, a raggedness, and a momentary faltering, but the drumming continued.
Secca glanced at the wave of white-clad horsemen thundering toward her too-small force. A second arrow spell might stop the thunder-drums totally, but would she have any lancers left?
“The flame spell!” Secca ordered.
“The flame spell! At my mark…” ordered Palian. “Mark!”
The tone from the players remained strong and true, and the heavy-chorded harmony from the second players was solid.
Secca sang:
“Turn to fire, turn to flame,
all those who stand against our name,
turn to ashes, turn to dust…”
The drums and the wind rose, along with the pounding hoofs of the Sturinnese mounts, now less than fifty yards from the base of the rise, yet when Secca’s last words died away, the sky flashed, and the flame lightnings flared—but only across the first lines of the charging Sturinnese. Horses and men went down in charred heaps, and the scent of burnt flesh flowed back to Secca, seemingly instantly. Nor did the lightnings reach all of that first rank.
The white wedge of riders to the west, toward the river and farthest to the right, seemed almost untouched as the lancers surged up the rise—and were met by Stepan’s lancers, who had managed a short charge downhill.
The lightnings died away, and from the hillside to the south, the pounding of the thunder-drums rose once more, not quite so loudly. With that rhythmic thundering came fiercer winds, howling, ripping at Secca’s jacket and hair, pelting fine grit into her face and eyes.
She squinted out across the lowlands. Through her watering eyes, she could see that the remaining Sturinnese lancers had turned their mounts back toward the cover of the birches and firs. Even those who had attacked Stepan’s lancers on the flank were falling back and turning their mounts. But though they had turned, the pounding of the thunder-drums continued.
“The arrow spell! Again!” Secca turned and shouted to Elfens. “Make ready more shafts!”
“The arrow spell!” echoed Palian. “Mark!”
“Nock arrows!” Elfens’ voice again rose above the winds.
Secca turned into the grit-bearing wind again, squaring her shoulders, then trying to relax her body. As the first bar of the players’ spelltune echoed across the lowlands between the rise and the firs and birches that the lancers had retreated into, the dull rumbling of the drums intensified once more.
Secca offered the second arrow spell.
“Heads of arrows, shot into the air….”
With her words, the wind rose, seemingly directed at her, more grit slashing across her cheeks and toward her eyes—and once more, the majority of the heavy arrows were turned by the winds. Not all—some must have struck a drummer or two, because the drumbeat faltered…but only for a time.
Secca could barely stand, daystars flashing across her vision, but the drums continued to beat, and heavy fog began to form in the lowest and dampest part of the meadow below the rising, streaming upward even as Secca watched through her dayflashed vision.
“Lady!” An Ebran captain in green rode toward Secca. “The arms commander would have us ride back to the high ridge.”
“Back to the high ridge,” Secca shouted back. “We will join forces there.” She stumbled toward the players, stopping short of Palian. “Remount…we must ride back to the high ridge before they regroup.”
“Players mount…back to the high ridge. Reform there!” ordered Palian.
“Remount! Now!” followed Delvor’s commands.
Secca staggered toward the gray mare, using what felt like the last of her strength to mount. Richina, already mounted, eased her mount next to Secca’s. The younger sorceress extended a water bottle.
“Lady, you must drink…and eat as you ride.”
With a nod, and a trembling hand, Secca took the water bottle. She drank as she rode at a fast trot back down the rise, glancing back over her shoulder. Behind her, Secca could hear the near frantic pounding of the thunder-drums, and feel the cold wind die away once more as she crossed the stretch of damp and brown-grassed meadow between the rise and the trees on the south side of the ridge which she had ridden down such a short time before.
Once back amid the trees and riding up the trail, Secca could see patches of fog appearing, oozing upward out of the ground itself, near-instantly.
Richina offered some bread, and Secca wolfed that down. While the daystars did not vanish from her vision, they did diminish in frequency and intensity.
“What a dissonant mess…” murmured the redhead under her breath between bites of the bread. She glanced over her shoulder. All she could see through the trees were patches of fog and trees.
By the time she was halfway up the ridge trail, the drums had died into silence and the lowlands were again covered with fog.
Once back on the ridge, the sorceress reined up the gray mare, and surveyed the lowlands and the hills to the south. It was as though she had done nothing—except destroy a few of the enemy and lose who knew how many of Stepan’s lancers.
She just kept looking at the swirling fog that had refilled the valley that separated her forces from those of the Sturinnese.
Stepan eased his mount up beside her.
Secca shook her head.
“It felt worse than it was,” offered the silver-haired arms commander. “We lost less than a company. They lost close to three companies, perhaps four.”
“They have twice our number, and they will have more soon,” Secca replied, “if I cannot find a way to stop this fog.”
Stepan looked down for a moment, not quite meeting her eyes, before he looked at her. “That is true. We cannot hold our position, not if we are attacked from the north.”
Secca nodded.
After a moment, she said, “I must think.” And eat…so she could think.