“But more than a raid,” he continued. “She’s got the town at her back, and if she’s not careful, the garrison could march out and cut her supply lines, coming up the river road, there.” Miklos pointed to indicate a potential weak point in Damanja’s lines. “Her whole army would be destroyed before it could flee to safety across the border.”
Davian frowned, and there was some confusion on the old soldier’s face. “Is that bad? Good? What do we want here?”
“What we want is to reach Lord Zoltan as quickly as possible and tell him that the bladedancers are on the road.” Miklos glanced back at the others, who were still waiting. “We need to get through.”
“It’ll be dangerous up ahead.”
“Aye,” Miklos agreed. “We’ll scout the road first.”
With only twenty men, Miklos wasn’t strong enough to force his way through, and he didn’t have sufficient forces to adequately probe all the possible roads to reach the battlefield, either, but he had to make an effort. He sent out four different groups of three men, each with a different pathway through to where the crows indicated the battlefield.
Miklos remained on the hillock with the small remainder, dismounted, and had his men conceal the horses among the trees while he and Davian lay on their bellies to survey the terrain. About ten minutes after sending out the riders, a company of roughly a hundred footmen came hurrying up the river road, headed north. These were most likely friendly troops leaving the Belingus garrison. They marched at double time, only to stop at the top of the next rise, as if seeing some opposing force blocking their way.
Three of the four scouting parties Miklos had sent returned within the half hour. The fourth, which had gone up the river road in the same direction where the Belingus garrison stalled, still hadn’t reported in after an hour. Captured? Slipped through to Zoltan’s army? Hard to say.
Of the three scouting reports, the surest path seemed to be through a village of rice farmers that was in flames, the peasants either slaughtered or having fled. Hard to say who had done the burning and killing of peasants, but there were bodies indicating that the armies had clashed and withdrawn. The main Zoltan camp lay just beyond.
Miklos ordered the remaining riders to set out. They passed through the burning village a few minutes later, veered away from a group of crossbowmen of unknown origin who took shots from a nearby watchtower, went through a low-lying valley between two hillocks, and finally approached a grassy rise where an army of several thousand men and horse had taken position. Lord Zoltan’s forces.
He was challenged upon approaching the outer pickets, and showed his ring to get through. He brought Davian with him, but left the others on the outskirts. A second challenge near the command tent demanded a password from the pair of riders, which Miklos didn’t have, but then someone recognized him as one of Zoltan’s lieutenants.
By now he could see the battlefield spreading off to the east. The terrain between here and there was mostly flat, with a few gentle hillocks like this one that might provide meager defensive advantage. An opposing force had taken root on one of them with swallow-tailed banners snapping in a breeze. Red and black—the colors of Lady Damanja. Spearmen in the front, with others digging a trench and planting a barrier of sharpened stakes, probably to shield archers.
Between the two armies lay a battlefield, where a number of dead men and horses indicated that a clash had already taken place, perhaps as the two armies maneuvered into position. Crows had descended to peck at the bodies, while others circled overhead, cawing. They, at least, seemed convinced that a larger battle was pending.
Lord Zoltan himself stood outside of his tent with legs spread shoulder-width and his fists at his hips as he took in the battlefield. He was a tall, sturdily built man with a strong jaw whose clean-shaven face had given way to stubble. In battle, he preferred crushing weapons, and his current weapon of choice was a battle-axe that had been forged at the warbrand temple. Gifted to him, in fact, by Miklos.
The crowlord wasn’t given to uncertainty, but today there was worry in his expression as he studied the enemy troops, which were maneuvering into position. He hadn’t yet spotted the newcomers coming up the hillock behind him.
It was time for Miklos to tell the big lie that would either set him down the path to glory, or see him fleeing for his life like a common bandit. Or worse. Doubt entered him, followed by a dull, aching throb in his chest. He rubbed at it and grimaced, and momentarily both the chest pain and the doubt vanished.
He leaned in to whisper to Davian. “Stay back by the lord’s guards. If matters look like they’re turning against us, go back to the men and make sure the horses are ready to ride. We might shortly be fleeing for our lives.”
Davian answered with a curt nod and withdrew. Miklos approached the crowlord cautiously. He drew a deep breath and cleared his throat.
Zoltan turned with a frown. “You! Demons roast you if you don’t have better news than what I’ve been hearing all day.”
“Mixed news, my lord. None of it as urgent as this.” Miklos indicated the enemy army with a sweep of the hand. “My lord, why aren’t we giving battle to Damanja’s army before she’s dug herself in?”
“You see those gray cloaks marching up along her south flank? Archers. Two hundred, maybe more. Those blasted women would shred our lines before we closed within fifty feet.”
Famously, as many as ninety percent of Damanja’s archers were women, recruited from several villages on the southern reaches of her fiefdom where girls were trained in the art from childhood. Her archers carried lighter bows than the heavier, more difficult to draw longbows favored by Zoltan and Balint’s troops, but what Damanja’s archers lacked in range they made up for with a lethal accuracy. It was said that the crowlord herself had trained with the bow as a girl.
“A cavalry charge will put them to flight,” Miklos said, knowing no such thing was possible.
“Oh certainly,” Zoltan said sarcastically, “except that the bulk of my horse is forty miles north, trying to push that villain Stronghand back across the border.”
“Surely we have some riders on hand. How many can we muster?”
Zoltan cracked his knuckles, one hand after another. “Roughly two hundred, but I need most of them as a reserve against the wolfhead riders. What about your men? You left with a hundred riders. How many are ready to fight?”
Miklos didn’t respond right away, but let a dark expression fall over his face. At last, he shook his head. “We suffered losses.”
“How bad?”
“The bladedancers resisted.”
“I knew they would, I warned you they would.” Zoltan’s jaw clenched, and a vein pulsed on his temple. “Answer the blasted question. How many did you lose?”
“I don’t know. . .too many. My lord, we have to stop those weapons from reaching Balint’s army. If Stronghand gets his hands on them, he’ll puncture our lines and send our troops to flight.”
“Dammit, I could stop him if this woman”—he spat the words—“hadn’t taken advantage of the situation. Opportunistic, backstabbing—”
“It isn’t opportunism, my lord. She thinks she was provoked. There were brigands, and they wore our colors. Could be Balint’s doing, could be a ruse by the brigands and Lady Damanja wasn’t bright enough to see through it.”
“I heard rumors—I’d hoped they weren’t true. What more do you know?”
Miklos laid out his story, telling all about the brigands that had burned one of Damanja’s villages while wearing Zoltan’s colors. This, of course, was Miklos’s own doing, and he felt a nervous tickle of sweat on the back of his neck. He hadn’t thought the woman’s response would be so harsh, had only meant to divert a few hundred of Zoltan’s men so as to weaken the crowlord’s efforts against Balint. Things were progressing faster than he’d imagined. It was a danger and an opportunity in equal measure.
Zoltan’s eyes narrowed as he went on. “Your knowledge is remarkably complete. Weren’t you in th
e mountains this whole time?”
Fortunately, Miklos had been giving this some thought over the past couple of days and had a ready answer, with a story concocted that was based on a sliver of truth. “There was a rat catcher, his boy, and some dogs. You know how they are, how they move about.”
“A rat catcher? What the devil are you talking about? No, I don’t know anything about them.”
“I mean they come and go from one land to another, plying their trade. Like merchants, but closer to the ground. The wretch was in Damanja’s village when it was attacked, and saw the brigands changing colors.”
“I need to talk to the woman—that’s what I should do. A parlay. Sit with Damanja and resolve the crisis. Pay some small indemnity, help her ride down the bandits. We’ll find this rat catcher—where did he go? He’ll tell us where the brigands got off to.”
A parlay? An indemnity? It was a startling concession from the crowlord, who’d been on the offensive only a few months earlier, determined to overrun Lord Balint’s territory, starting from the volcanic wash that marked their northeastern border, and invade from the eastern bulge all the way to Riverrun and beyond, capturing the rich farmland between. Devour a third of his rival’s land, and then, in a few years, absorb the rest of it. That Zoltan was now talking about paying off the crowlord to the south showed how much his fortunes had changed.
Zoltan studied the battlefield. “Those archers are a big problem—they’re well screened and positioned to cut down any move up the middle—but I don’t see many supply wagons. How long could they sustain a barrage without running short of arrows?”
“Maybe that’s why Damanja is delaying her attack,” Miklos said. “What if instead—”
“You let me worry about the battlefield. What happened with the bladedancers? Did they explain why they were selling Balint so many weapons at once, why they think it fit to change the balance of power on the plains?”
“The bladedancers were arrogant, my lord, and wouldn’t tell me anything. I approached humbly, peacefully. I told the master sohn that we wished only to delay the shipment of weapons until we could understand his motives. And if they insisted on delivering them to Balint, that we requested the right to arm ourselves in equal measure.”
Zoltan grunted. “Go on.”
Miklos continued with his story, which deviated farther and farther from the truth. When the master refused to listen, he claimed, when the master grew angry and threatening, Miklos had withdrawn to the post road, thinking only to let the old man’s temper cool. That night, bladedancers swept into Miklos’s camp in an act of pure treachery, clearly intent on wiping them out to the last man.
“Damn them,” Zoltan said. “Why would the bladedancers throw in their lot with Stronghand? They’ve always maintained their distance. Their neutrality. Almost farcically. I didn’t understand the selling of the weapons, and I understand this treacherous attack even less. Are you sure you did nothing to provoke them? Make them think they were at risk?”
“Nothing, my lord. I swear it. I entered alone and unarmed. The rest of the men remained on the road. When the old man refused, I withdrew peacefully and made no threats.”
“How did you survive? Why didn’t all of you die?”
Here Miklos allowed himself a grim smile. “They aren’t invincible, my lord.”
And here began the biggest of his lies. The one that would dissolve if Lord Zoltan sent one of his other lieutenants to question the survivors of the attack. He’d left the severely injured in Hooffent, which was hopefully ten feet beneath lava by now, cutting off Narina and her small party from the rest of the bladedancer temple, but there were others in his company who knew what had happened on the mountainside that afternoon, those men who’d remained with the horses to ready the escape. Miklos could count on Davian to hold his tongue, but what about the others? Most were loyal to their crowlord.
If Zoltan discovered the truth, if he even guessed at it, Miklos would shortly be fleeing for his life. He’d better hope that Davian had the horses ready to ride.
“The bladedancers are formidable warriors,” he began. “Nobody would claim otherwise. They move at twice the speed of one of our men, fight through wounds that would have anyone else lying on the ground, trying to keep his guts from spilling into the dirt. They wield swords that can shatter normal steel without losing their edge.”
“All of which I already know,” Zoltan said with a grumble. “It’s why we have to stop Balint from having those arms. So get to the point.”
“Everything else is myth, legend. Reputation. If the bladedancers earned that reputation years ago, it’s undeserved now.”
“Explain yourself.”
“Whatever training they had, it wasn’t on the battlefield. It was in their arenas, sparring. That’s a different sort of experience from real-life combat, my lord. Once my men roused themselves from the initial surprise attack, we formed ranks and drove back the bladedancers. Even killed some of them.”
“Yet you still lost the fight.”
“We still lost,” Miklos conceded. He let his head drop and furrowed his brow, as if the memory struck a wound into his very soul. “Sixty men dead. More wounded and left behind. I blame myself for not being ready for a surprise attack.”
“Against how many bladedancers?”
“We killed at least three, and wounded three others. Two others escaped unharmed.”
Not true, any of it. What had really happened was that dozens of his men had been felled by one old man. One of the survivors claimed he’d put a spear straight through Sohn Joskasef’s belly, and insisted that the man had surely died from the wound. Maybe that was true—Joskasef’s daughter immediately leaving the temple to personally escort Balint’s weapons hinted as much—but it was also true that the ambush had failed.
As Miklos had known would happen. Capturing those weapons was never his intent.
Zoltan turned suddenly to the battlefield, and Miklos followed his gaze. Lady Damanja’s forces were on the move. A wing of footmen, perhaps three or four hundred in all, had formed ranks to the rear, and now pushed through an indifferent mass of troops whose chaos had kept them concealed. Once clear of the main force, they broke into a trot. Laden with chain mail, shields, and spears, there was no way to keep that pace for long, and they shortly slowed, but if they kept pressing forward, they’d soon force a wedge into Zoltan’s lines sufficient to allow Damanja’s entire army to flood into the gap.
“Bring up the shield wall,” Zoltan murmured.
In the same way that Davian was a veteran of close-in combat, of the hand-to-hand brawling of spear, sword, and smashing shields, and bore the scars to prove it, Zoltan was a master of the larger sweep of war. He’d have met with his captains and lieutenants upon arriving at the battlefield, with every contingency planned. And this was Zoltan’s land—he knew the terrain and would have scouted it before planting his flag.
With that advance preparation, there was no need to give explicit instructions. Rather, he let his commanders take the lead. A force was swiftly marching to meet Damanja’s troops, these being heavily armored foot soldiers with tower shields that could form a nearly impenetrable wall against archers. It was smaller in numbers than the opposing force, but strong enough to give the enemy pause. Two additional wings swept in to give support. Meanwhile, Damanja’s forces were arraying themselves calmly opposite.
“I still don’t like those archers,” Zoltan said. “She’s positioned them well, too. Look. Protected from cavalry charge, shielded by good spearmen. We won’t get to them easily.”
“Her army is smaller than Balint’s,” Miklos said. “But it’s a well-organized force. Are you sure we have the edge?”
“Blast Balint Stronghand,” Zoltan said. “If he’d withdrawn his army and sued for peace, I’d have three thousand more men on this battlefield. We’d rout Damanja by nightfall.”
What Zoltan left out was that Balint’s army—the one he insisted should be withdrawn—was fighting
on its own soil. Zoltan’s forces were a day’s march beyond the line of control that had served as an uneasy frontier the last four years. To withdraw would mean surrendering eighty square miles of farmland, two border castles, and the largest granite quarry of the central plains. Balint could not possibly agree to such a demand. No doubt he was ready, in fact, to cross the Vestanovul as soon as he got the bladedancer weapons, eager to avenge his losses in his enemy’s own lands.
The battle preparations now afoot, but with an actual clash still at a distance, Zoltan turned back to Miklos, who had been carefully preparing the rest of his argument.
“You killed three bladedancers?” the crowlord said. “Were any of them sohns, or were they all fraters?”
“Fraters?” Miklos asked, feigning ignorance.
“Students, trainees.” Zoltan sounded impatient. “I don’t know exactly what they are, but each sword temple only has a handful of sohns—the rest are lesser fighters. So I want to know if you killed any of the masters.”
“I wasn’t in a position to ask. I was losing men by the score.”
“Good horsemen, too. Demons take the sword temples, I could use them in my cavalry now. We’d have those archers overrun.”
“The point was, we fought back and did damage,” Miklos said. “And put some fear into the bladedancers. So much so that they left the temple with Balint’s weapons. They’re on their way right now, and will be crossing through our lands toward Riverrun, following the post road near the foothills.”
Zoltan’s gaze had drifted back to the battlefield, but now he stiffened. “What? There are bladedancers in the plains? Now?”
“Yes, my lord, three of them. That’s all. One is a boy, one is an old man. One is a woman—she might be trouble. Most likely one of their masters, a sohn. But virtually alone, she’s vulnerable.”
Miklos concocted a story of how he’d left riders at the free village of Hooffent in the foothills to watch for pursuit from the blade temple. There had been an eruption. Under other circumstances, Zoltan would have been keenly interested in the eruption of Manet Tuzzia, seeing an opportunity to use the crisis to seize the free village of Hooffent and add it to his domain, but this detail seemed to elicit little interest given the other events in motion.
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