by A. H. Lee
And we’re out of time for this. Hastafel’s troops were organizing, closing up behind Roland and his men. It’s now or never if we want to make it back to the rest of the army. “Fall back!” he bellowed.
The first surprise was over. The second would not be along for an hour or more. Time for some hard fighting.
* * * *
Sairis rode through a gray world of swirling mist. He thought it was the banks of the Styx. He could hear water not far off. But that didn’t seem right. He’d never encountered such fog on the Styx. He could barely make out the ears of his horse.
Which shouldn’t exist, now that he thought about it. He’d never had a horse on the Styx, either.
Sairis thought perhaps he was in the mirror maze. This seemed like one of those in-between places.
Gradually, he became aware that someone was riding beside him. The stranger was dressed like a cavalry officer, with the full beard of a man who had been living in the wilderness for some time. Sairis noticed that in spite of the man’s easy movement on the horse’s back, his tack and bridle made not a rustle or a clink. Sairis could hear his own horse’s footfalls and breathing, but his companion’s animal walked as silently as a great cat.
“Who are you?” whispered Sairis, but the man did not turn to look at him.
Something stirred in the fog to his left. Sairis turned and saw another figure, this one surely no older than himself. The fellow was jogging in full military gear, his light armor bumping against his body, a sword slung over his back. And yet his movements made no noise. Beyond him, Sairis caught sight of another horse and rider, more men on foot, more horses... There were hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, moving through the fog.
I need magic, thought Sairis. I need blood or names or... “Who are you?” he demanded. “Tell me, so that I can help you.”
The man riding beside him turned, and his eyes were not friendly. “Who are you?”
* * * *
Sairis came to, slumped over Cato’s neck. The horse had stopped walking. The sky overhead was pearl gray through the heavy clouds, though Sairis could see little beneath the trees around him. The world was quiet, except for the steady patter of rain.
Dawn. The reality cut through Sairis’s confused thoughts. It’s dawn, and Roland and Daphne and Anton and all their men are fighting for their lives in the valley, expecting reinforcements at any moment...
Sairis risked a kick to Cato’s flanks. The horse gave a grumbling whinny. He took a few more steps and then subsided. Sairis gritted his teeth. He managed to get one rubbery leg over the saddle and slid to the ground. His boots squelched into mud, but at least Roland had gotten him good ones and they weren’t sucked off his feet. Sairis held Cato’s reins in the white-knuckled grip of a person who thinks he may fall from a mountain at any moment, and cautiously advanced.
There was a tree down across the path. From the ground, Sairis could see better. He realized, with a stab of hope, that they were no longer on the side of the cliff. Cato brought me to the top of the ridge.
“Good horse,” whispered Sairis. “Good horse, good horse...”
In order to get around the fallen tree, they had to make a detour through brambles. Sairis wished he had been allowed to put on his waistcoat, if only for another layer of fabric between his skin and the vicious thorns. He slipped twice and came up muddy and bleeding. Cato endured the thorns with remarkably good grace, though he did balk when Sairis tried to drag him through a tight space beneath another fallen tree.
By the time they made it back onto the path again, there was enough light to see the trail even from Cato’s saddle. Hurry, thought Sairis. Hurry, hurry! He wished he’d paid more attention at the commander’s table last night when men were talking about landmarks. The woods on top of the saddle of Mount Cairn were as dense as a jungle. Sairis had never seen so much green in all his life. Is this what it looks like when a forest gets rain?
Sairis had to climb down from the saddle over and over to navigate around fallen trees. Each time, he thought he might not make it back up. He could tell that his magic had neutralized a bit of the iron. But not nearly enough.
A fine, swirling mist joined the bands of rain. We’re in a cloud, thought Sairis. Surely that means we’re near the top. The trail had turned to a torrent of gushing mud. It narrowed and narrowed. Then, it disappeared.
* * * *
Roland’s men encountered the first golem about halfway back to the main army. This one had a number of human skulls half-buried in the mud of its vaguely humanoid body. Its many mouths went click, click, click! It cried out at random in the voices of dead men.
“Sir!” shouted an officer at Roland’s elbow, and Roland realized he had stopped moving.
Roland took a deep breath, shook sweat out of his eyes, and reached for his lance. “Distance weapons!” he bellowed. “Take it apart! Do not listen to anything it says! It is not alive! It is not human!”
In the background, he could hear the thing weeping for its mother. At the same time, its great clay fist flew out with unexpected speed and knocked a man from his horse. Fortunately, his companions reacted quickly. By the time Roland’s men had managed to disassemble the monster they were in the thick of the fighting, dodging pikes and arrows from Hastafel’s troops as well as grappling with the golem.
Roland had lost good men already, and the battle was just getting started. He couldn’t help a glance to the south. The saddle of Mount Cairn was predictably obscured by cloud. Come on, Uncle Jessup. We need you now.
* * * *
At first, Sairis didn’t panic. The trail had been faint at times before. However, as he searched further and further afield with no sign of a path in the dense foliage, he began to lose his nerve. What if it’s been completely washed away? What if I lost it a long time ago? What if I’ve been following a game trail or mud run-off all morning? The sun was well up now, though it rarely appeared through the rain and mist.
At last, Sairis gave up searching for the trail and just moved due north, keeping the morning light on his right shoulder, leading Cato. He came out abruptly on the brink of gray nothingness. Sairis leaned out cautiously, trying to gauge the height of the slope. It might have been a cliff or a ditch for all he could tell in the rolling clouds. He took a few experimental steps down the steep incline, but Cato flatly refused to follow, and he was forced to come back up.
Well, I can’t go north any longer. He turned and walked west along the edge of the gray expanse.
He’d been walking for a little while when the clouds opened abruptly, and Sairis took a startled step farther from the edge. The ground was a long way down. Sairis’s eyes were drawn inexorably westward to that blue that he’d seen only once in a fragment of memory inside Hastafel’s sword.
The Shattered Sea. His eyes skipped back to the valley below him. That’s got to be the pass. People moved like ants over the valley floor. Daphne’s troops were wearing green. Lamont’s were wearing blue. Hastafel’s men wear a lot of brown and gray. The green was hard to see, as Sairis was sure soldiers from the pass intended. However, the flash of knightly armor could not be mistaken. One of those specks is Roland. The knights were spread out over the valley, fanning out from the pass. The blue line was cutting through Hastafel’s flank on the same side as Mount Cairn.
From up here, Sairis could see something else: troops moving along the northern edge of the valley, almost indistinguishable from the rocks. They’re trying to cut our soldiers off from the fort, Sairis realized. And there were so many more of them. It was obvious from such a bird’s eye view. Roland needs help now.
Sairis struggled back into Cato’s saddle and directed him west along the cliff. He dared to give the horse a kick and gritted his teeth as Cato picked up his pace. The trail must go down the cliff near here. I can’t be that far from it. All I have to do is keep moving along the edge until I find where the trail descends. Then, if I can get a little lower, a little closer to the battle, surely I’ll have all the magic
a necromancer could ever want.
Chapter 13. Flanked
There came a point in any intense action when Roland lost sight of the bigger picture. It was one disadvantage of being the sort of leader people called “hero”—the sort who rode in front and led by example. Roland couldn’t worry about whether Lamont had broken through Hastafel’s southern flank or whether Daphne was staying safely out of the front lines or whether they were overextending themselves to the south. He couldn’t even worry about how many men he’d lost, or whether his company was sticking together or whether the wounded he’d sent to the rear had made it safely out of the fighting. Roland’s world shrank to the next man coming at him—men on foot with spears or swords, mounted warriors with lances. His focus dwindled to the space around his horse’s head and the increasingly treacherous footing.
And then Roland was glad that he had not taken Cato into this fight, because a crossbow bolt caught his horse in the throat. The bolt penetrated the horse’s leather armor and went so deep that Roland saw the tip protruding from the animal’s neck.
Then all Roland could think about was falling. Falling and not dying or being pinned or trampled. The horse, at least, did not suffer. It went down so hard and so fast that it didn’t have time to roll or kick in its death throes. That probably saved Roland’s life, because the enemies around him did not give him time to recover.
Roland staggered free of his fallen horse and pulled his sword loose just in time to block a pike aimed at his head. A battle axe made a meaty thunk as it missed him by inches and slammed into the dead horse. Then one of his men leapt in to engage a rider that would have trampled Roland into the blood-drenched soil. Another of his men, also on foot, turned back-to-back with him and Roland had a moment to catch his breath. All around them the fighting was intense. The ground was spongy with rain and now slick with blood.
A creature came at Roland from around his dead horse. A man, he reminded himself, just a badly injured man. But the man’s face was a bloody pulp on one side. A loop of intestines protruded from an awful stab wound in his abdomen. He should be seeking the rear of his own lines, looking for a doctor and a place to lie down, perhaps a cool drink before he died. Instead, he was roaring like an animal, holding a weapon that looked like a scythe. He should have been weak, but he slammed into Roland with such force that Roland barely kept his footing.
The man didn’t stop after Roland cut his legs from under him. He grabbed at Roland’s greaves and tried to trip him as another enemy attacked. He was biting the leather of Roland’s boots as Roland finally shook him loose.
Roland wanted to shout at him, “Why do you care so much?! This isn’t your homeland! What did we ever do to you?”
A voice in his head whispered, How is this any different from fighting the walking dead? When Hastafel can fill them with this much hate and rage? We need magic. We need...more men.
Roland sensed that things were not going well. No matter how many enemies he killed, they just kept coming. Rain had begun to sweep across the battlefield, and a wind was blowing from the sea—a strong salt tang that might have been invigorating in other circumstances. But the Shattered Sea was Hastafel’s weapon, not Mistala’s. It brought him magic and reinforcements.
The sun, when it peeked through the clouds again, was well up the sky. If we last until midday, we’ll be doing better than Uncle Jessup ever expected, whispered a voice in Roland’s mind. No. Reinforcements will sweep down from Mount Cairn at any moment, and Hastafel will get the surprise of his life.
“Sir!”
A mounted soldier was trying to approach. He was clearly hesitant to shout Roland’s name for fear of making him a priority target. Roland worked his way towards the messenger.
“Sir, your sister would like a word.”
Roland looked for his senior lieutenant and was grateful to find him alive. “Noel, take charge. Cover us.”
Another downpour of rain swept across the valley as Roland and the messenger worked their way back through the lines. The rain helped to wash some of the mud and ichor from his armor, although it made the ground even more treacherous. As the excitement of battle dissipated, Roland became conscious of the many bruises beneath his steel plates. One of his greaves was missing. The other hung crooked where a strap had been severed, possibly by human teeth. He had a dent so deep in the side of his breastplate that the metal was cutting him. That needed to be hammered out. And I need a new horse.
Roland realized that the messenger was leading him, not straight up the valley, but south. He had a terrible suspicion. “Have we been cut off from the forts?”
“I...believe that is a concern, sir,” said the soldier miserably.
This was always how it would end without enough men, thought Roland. This is why Uncle Jessup never allowed himself to be drawn out here. Roland’s eyes strayed to the slopes of Mount Cairn, now directly ahead. Streamers of cloud blew around the summit, which seemed both impossibly close and impossibly far away. Roland strained his eyes for movement in the rain.
* * * *
Sairis urged Cato into a teeth-jarring trot. He was barely staying on, and yet he soon decided that they needed to go faster. His glimpses of the valley were maddeningly brief through the drifting clouds, but he grasped that the bulk of Daphne’s army had swung south with Lamont’s breaching charge. This had left them thin in the area of the forts.
Sairis didn’t know much about war or battles, but he knew about tricks. There’s no more tempting lure than an apparent mistake. If Hastafel let them break his southern lines in order to draw them away from the fort, they won’t have enough men to correct the error. They’ll be cut off from the fort, from supplies, from their only possible retreat. He’ll crush them against Mount Cairn.
Cato couldn’t really gallop, not in the mud and undergrowth, but he opened into a canter that was surprisingly smooth. The wind was coming from the west—salt in the air. Sairis felt as though something inside him was expanding, blossoming in the rain from the Shattered Sea. He felt stronger. But still he found no way to descend the impossibly steep slope.
Perhaps an hour passed, and the terrain grew more broken. Cato could no longer canter. Boulders the size of cottages littered the slope and the clifftop. Sairis was breathing hard. His glasses kept fogging.
At last, a sheer rockface rose out of the mist ahead. Sairis stared at it in bewilderment—forty feet of unscalable cliff. He couldn’t continue west without either climbing it, which was impossible, or taking what looked like a very lengthy detour into the dense forest.
Sairis slid off Cato’s back. He walked to the rockface and put both hands against it, as though testing to see whether it was real. No.
In a burst of frustration, he slammed his fists into the rock and screamed, “No, no, no!” It can’t end here. I will find a way down. I will find a way if I have to teach myself to fly.
To his right, the mist cleared again, and he saw the wave of gray and brown churning near the tight opening at the top of the valley.
It’s already too late, whispered a voice in his head. It was too late when you failed to save Jessup Malconwy. Did you really think that you constitute reinforcements all by yourself? You have failed. Roland is probably already dead. He died waiting for you. Winthrop will come along later to pick up the pieces. He’ll blame you for everything, and won’t he be a little bit right after all?
“No,” whispered Sairis. Tears of grief and frustration mingled with the water beading on his cheeks.
It occurred to him that he’d left his tower looking for water, and here it was all around him—the rain stolen by the Sundering, the rain that should have watered Karkaroth’s wood, falling here on this accursed mountain. He’d found it, and he could do nothing with it. Nothing to help his master, nothing to help Roland. The source of all magic lay in a vast sparkling swath before his very eyes, and thousands of men were dying below him, and he could do nothing with any of it.
What if I just stepped off the cliff? wo
ndered Sairis. When I get close enough to the battle, will I have enough magic to cushion my fall? He’d never heard of such a thing. But if I fail...I won’t know, will I? Not for long.
Cato gave an uneasy snort and stamped a hoof. Sairis turned sharply, expecting to see the vanguard of Winthrop’s soldiers or scouts. But he saw nothing, only the drifting cloud. He noticed that the birds had stopped singing. An instant later, the sun disappeared again. Then Sairis saw them.
Chapter 14. Hungry Ghosts
Roland found Daphne in a stand of trees beside one of the many little rivulets flowing from the mountains. She was surrounded by about two thirds of her original guard. They had clearly seen action. Several were missing pieces of armor. More than one horse was limping. Daphne had intentionally gone into the fight dressed in plain cavalry garb to avoid attracting enemy sharpshooters. She still looked unharmed, though wet and muddy.
She was talking to Anton, who had not been so lucky. A physician stood beside his horse, dressing a wound that had caught him near the knee and must be causing a great deal of pain. Anton’s face was pale, but he listened with fierce concentration as Daphne spoke.
“Roland!” she called as soon as she saw him.
Roland strode forward. It was good to see her face, though it looked pinched and anxious. “Daphne!”
He reached up to take her hand in both of his, and then realized his gauntlets were still covered in gore. Daphne hesitated and Roland withdrew his hands quickly. “Pardon. I’ll express my affection when I’m not so filthy.”
Daphne’s eyes raced over him. “Roland, are you hurt?”
“Nothing serious. How bad is our situation?”
Daphne sighed. “Pretty bad. I was so enthusiastic when Hastafel’s southern flank broke that we drove too deeply and committed too many troops.”
“I did that,” said Anton quickly.
“I gave my blessing,” said Daphne.