He touched it, almost tenderly; the man’s position and influence had served to his advantage after all.
The camp was a model of calmness and efficiency; no one that he could see was idling. Everyone was doing one job or another and seemed to start working all the faster once they saw him. Men acknowledged him with a deferential bow or ‘sir’ as he passed them. He was pleased; good men as most of them were they had to be kept on their toes and he was just the man for that. He saw two of his captains animatedly talking to each other close to one of the catapults; they were actually the people he had come out to see, so, taking his time as always, he strode over to them. They stopped talking and pulled themselves up stiffly as soon as they saw him.
‘News?’ One word was enough from him.
‘Yes, sir, everything is going as planned. The men working in the western woods have returned with enough material for a ram and a siege tower. The carpenters will be starting to work on them in the morning.’
‘And why aren’t they working on them now?’
The captain he was speaking to swallowed nervously. ‘Well, sir, it is almost dark...’
‘They cannot work by torchlight? They are building war machines, not a noble’s dresser. Time is important here. Put them to work for an hour; they can have an extra grog ration at the end of it. And we need more timber. One siege tower is nowhere near enough. Send the same detail back to the woods tomorrow, and the day after, until I am satisfied.’
‘I will see to it immediately, sir!’ The captain ran off, seemingly relieved to get away. The one man that remained waited nervously for Trask to speak again.
‘The attack detail is prepared?’
‘Standing by, sir, as requested.’
‘Good. They are unlikely to be needed; I cannot see the infiltrator unit getting over the walls and opening the gate tonight, but they need to be ready just in case.’
‘They are, sir. Just waiting for your order, sir.’
‘Just waiting for my order,’ Trask repeated quietly. He pulled out his knife and held it up to the pale moon, which was just beginning to make its presence known. ‘Now,’ he said – his voice was quiet but its deep bass tone carried a perpetual threat – ‘Are you going to tell me?’
‘Tell you what, sir?’ The man shifted his feet.
‘What the two of you were arguing about.’
The man almost choked. ‘It was nothing, sir, just a minor disagreement between friends, that is all.’
‘Pleased to hear it.’ Trask smiled and looked the man straight in the eye. ‘As it is so minor, there should not be a problem telling me about it should there?’
‘No, sir.’ The man spoke slowly, trying to choose his words as carefully as he could. ‘It is just that a few of the men ... well, they subscribe to the Frach Brotherhood and are part of that church. Some of them are a little ... upset that there is no priest of that calling available to perform services for them. At evening prayer about an hour ago...’
‘Yes?’
‘A couple of them shouted down the Artoran priest, calling him soft and complacent. There was a bit of a brawl to be honest, sir, no serious damage.’
‘And this is the first I have heard of it.’
‘It did not seem important enough to bother you, sir.’
Trask put his knife away and put his arm around the man’s shoulder; he led him alongside the catapult, which stood quietly next to its defensive ditch.
‘Let me explain something to you,’ he said softly. ‘In my camp if a mouse breaks into the stores and eats the cheese, it is important to me, let alone the first rumblings of a seditious mutiny, which is just what you have outlined. I need to be informed the second...’ He tightened the grip on the man’s shoulder. ‘I mean the very second that this sort of thing happens. You know the men who shouted the priest down?’
‘Yes, sir.’ The man’s voice was a whisper.
‘In the morning they are to be flogged; just lightly, ten lashes will do. All men to witness it after which I will explain that the Frach Brotherhood and I have had – what was it you called it? – a minor disagreement and one that will be resolved once the town is taken and I can speak to them. And now...’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘You will tell me which of the two of you is the Frach devotee; as you were arguing I can only assume that one of you agreed with tonight’s incident while the other didn’t.’
The man breathed a little easier. ‘It is not I, sir.’
‘Very well,’ said Trask briskly. ‘Then tell him he is in charge of the floggings tomorrow. That is...’ Trask suddenly gave the man’s shoulder a mighty heave, propelling him into the ditch where he landed heavily on the soft earth. ‘...Once you have climbed out of the ditch. I do not appreciate having things kept from me. You need to learn this if you wish to progress further in your career.’
From the ditch the man spoke, sounding slightly muffled. ‘I will learn, sir, I swear.’
‘I know,’ said Trask, walking back the way he came. Commanding an army always brought these sorts of niggling problems; they had to be stamped on swiftly, before they could take root and fester. Yes, problems large and small, that was what commanding an army was all about.
That was why he loved it so much.
44
Cheris barely noticed the encroaching darkness. The candle and the thin wispy light floating at her shoulder meant that darkness was not an obstacle for her. She turned another page of the book and continued to read. She had been reading and speaking for almost two hours now, far longer than Anaya had needed, but then Anaya was summoning only a minor elemental spirit, not ... this.
Finally the second part of the spell was over and she could take another drink. As she did so, she heard a lone owl in the trees below. She brushed the hair out of her eyes and picked up the knife. This she was not looking forward to. For all the hurt and suffering she had endured over the past weeks she still hated pain, and now she was going to inflict it on herself.
Slowly she drew the knife across her left palm, uttering the tiniest whimper as she did so. She squeezed her hand and drops of warm blood fell into the bowl underneath. It contents started to hiss.
‘The blood of a mage,’ she said quietly. ‘More precious to you than the blood of a thousand mortal men. Let us see if it is enough to attract you.’ She picked up the bowl and placed it gently on the ground in front of the rock she was using as a table. Returning to her book she started to speak again:
‘Dresa lutelneto fyrgy
Dresa vavanaa ezhoco za pole cothesey
Atan eona olizent trnexmrsh
O olvon azhathenes meon vavaa
Uven vrna atrne teo.
Uven vrna atrne teo.’
‘My blood summons you.’ She said it over and over again. The second she cut her hand she had passed the point of no return, for the thing she had been calling for so long could finally taste her, finally smell her. And soon it would be coming. She breathed in slowly, trying to control her nerves; fear or hesitation now would kill her in a trice. She turned a few more pages in the book, just as a small black sphere lifted into the air above her from the bowl that held her blood. This was where Anaya had made her mistake. To control that which had been summoned a litany had to be recited that would bind it to the will of the summoner. Even then, if the spirit was powerful enough, it could break free at some point, free to turn on the mage that had called it into this world. Anaya had started to speak hers far too late, for the spirit already had a presence here and was so much better equipped to resist her attempts at control.
Cheris glanced quickly at the tiny black orb floating close to her eye line and started to recite the litany. She kept her tone even and controlled, ignoring her trembling hands and her fluctuating nerves. The orb started to increase in size, not quickly, but inexorably. A feather, small and white, shed by some bird living in the high crags above her floated gently towards her, sinking in the still air. It was drawn to the orb, pirouetting slowly
towards it until finally the tip of its shaft brushed the expanding ball of darkness. Instantly, in a space faster than any heartbeat, it was sucked into the orb where it vanished into nothingness. For this was not a sphere of night or blackness. It was a sphere of nothingness, a space into which anything called from the Plane of Lucan could appear.
Cheris continued to read, perfectly aware that the orb was growing. She could close the book now, for she knew all the words by heart, but she decided not to – it gave her a focus, something on which her mind could concentrate, something to keep her fear at bay.
The orb was larger than her now, floating in the air not ten feet from her nose and at its heart something started to appear, a tiny spark of indigo, flickering timorously, barely discernible at all. But like the orb it started to grow. Cheris did not know exactly how large it would get but did know that, once it was fully established in this world, it would dwarf Anaya’s column of fire. What sort of folly had she committed herself to? It was too late to worry about it now, she thought; her path was set and could not be turned away from.
Cheris continued to read, and the orb and its inhabitant continued to grow.
Morgan had eaten and drunk well, his first substantial meal for a couple of days, and thus refreshed, he left the tower and stood once again on the wall looking to the east. Another figure was there, with a couple of white-cloaked knights standing close by. This figure was also gazing to the east. Morgan was going to have to keep his voice down, lest he let anything slip in earshot of the knights.
‘Hello, Mikel,’ he said with forced cheer. ‘Looking at the country in this light?’
‘There is no light is there,’ Mikel replied. ‘I can barely see my hand.’ He turned away from whatever it was he was looking at. ‘I had better go indoors; tonight is no time for a mage to be out. Too many dangers lurk in the darkness.’ He sounded afraid.
Morgan nodded, understanding what Mikel meant. He let the knights escort Mikel into the tower where he would reside surrounded by stone walls several feet thick, safe from whatever the night may bring. As the knights passed, he felt rather than saw their eyes boring into him; he knew they suspected his collusion in Cheris’s escape, just as they also suspected Mikel. There was no proof, though, and he was a baron, so there was little they could do, as long as he denied any involvement in the affair. The pass he had given Cheris he had told her to destroy as soon as she no longer had use for it. It was the only thing that could trip him up, but he trusted the girl to do the right thing.
It was his turn to look east. Night held the land firmly in its grip now. The sky was cloudless and stars speckled the heavens, a clear half-moon sat low in the sky giving the barest illumination to the dark stone walls and battlements on which he now stood.
Did he see something just then? The barest flicker of light in the far distance? He peered out over the battlements, trying to close the distance with his eyes alone. He saw it again, like a candle blown by the breeze, only smaller, much, much smaller. Like a distant beacon it appeared to him, a pinprick of light winking in and out on the lower mountain side. He still wasn’t fully sure if his eyes were deceiving him, but this was no time for prevarication – too many lives were at stake.
He found Captain Mirik quickly enough, discussing deployments with his men-at-arms at the tower that adjoined the southern and eastern walls.
‘Captain!’ Morgan cut into their conversation with uncharacteristic brusqueness. ‘I want the men off the walls and the streets cleared. Immediately. We spend the next few hours watching the enemy through our windows and arrow slits.’
‘But...’ Mirik started to reply.
‘No questions. You clear the streets and I will do the walls. Something is afoot and we need to be prepared. In half an hour I do not want to see a rat crawling in the city. Understood?’
Mirik went to do his bidding immediately. Morgan spent twenty minutes getting his orders passed along the walls and once things appeared to be clear he returned to his tower. At the doorway he saw Syalin; he had told her to stay below, but was not surprised to see her disobey him.
‘Interesting light,’ she said, pointing to the east.
‘You see it, too? I was unsure.’
‘No, you weren’t. You were expecting something like this. Don’t deny it – there are just the two of us here.’
Morgan sighed. ‘It would be true to say that I am less than surprised by developments, yes.’
Syalin put her hand on his shoulder; her face was just inches from his own. ‘I do not think you know what you have allowed here. That light has got stronger just in the few minutes I have been looking at it; she is playing with powers none of us understand, least of all her. The two of you could have doomed hundreds, even thousands, with this madness.’
‘Then we had better go to our rooms, and leave Trask’s men to see what it is first hand.’ Morgan went through the door. Syalin heard his feet on the heavy stone steps as he climbed up to his room.
She looked at the strange light again; it was even stronger now, flashing alternately white, cobalt and purple, like a star that had fallen to earth. She shook her head in trepidation before going indoors, shutting the door behind her.
The thing was still growing. Soon the sphere of nothingness that had conveyed it into this world would disintegrate, leaving nothing but the traveller, trapped in a land that would ultimately kill it, so devoid was it of the magic that sustained it in its own world. Cheris had thought she had a vague idea of how large it would get, but it had long since surpassed her expectations. Standing where she was, she felt like an ant next to a rearing bear. It resembled an aurora, an amorphous cloud of rapidly shifting shape and colour; it was strange to think about it being sentient and even more unsettling to feel – and she could feel it and the malice that it was bringing to bear on her. Compared to what she was close to now, Anaya’s demon had been a pitiful effort. It was vast, maybe even larger than the plateau on which she was now standing, though it was difficult to tell for sure, so rapidly did its shape shift and change. It had a voice, too, not a physical one but one she could feel in her head; its language, if one could call it that, was one of emotions and feelings rather than words, but she understood it all the same, pressing her, trying to resist her, though at the moment her spell of control was holding firm.
Finally, it stopped growing, looming above her in a thousand shades of amethyst, azure and white. At its heart lightning played fitfully; it was suppressing its true power, Cheris could tell.
At last the orb that held it in check collapsed with a loud crack, its job now done. The thing that remained stood, silently brooding. It wanted to kill her, Cheris could tell; it was continuing to fight her binding litany. It was time she told it what she wanted it to do.
‘Let me in,’ she said, and the spirit understood. She could travel with it in her mind, see what it saw, direct it to where she wanted it to go. To do such a thing was exhausting; she could not sustain it for long, but then again she only had one task to give it.
She shut her eyes and gasped. There was light, piercing agonising light and colour, pain and anger. Her whole body shook; she almost fell such were her convulsions. She tasted vomit at the back of her mouth; her head felt like it would explode. A drop of blood ran from her nose, and then from the corner of her eye.
And then she could see again. She saw the mountain through a haze of cerulean and the woods and the plateau. And then something else, the tiniest of figures standing next to a large stone, frail and small as though the slightest of winds would blow it away. It was her. She saw herself.
How very odd. She smiled at the absurdity but only for a second. There were things to do. She thought of what she wanted and the great cloud lifted into the sky, high above the falls and over them, past the woods and into the plain towards the lights of Felmere and the sprawling range of campfires outside it.
Trask’s infiltration squad, nearly fifty grizzled war veterans, continued to lie low in and around a stand
of trees about a mile from Felmere itself. Their ladders, designed to scale the city walls, lay flat in the grass covered in dew. They still had a few hours to wait before the single chime of the Artoran church bell, their signal to move in on the city and climb its walls. Their leader, a clean-shaven silver-haired man called Tomas had served with and for Trask for twenty years. He was uneasy with the idea of fighting his own people, but, like the man he worked for, coin was his mistress and wherever Trask was money flowed. His own estate close to Haslan Falls with its three servants bore full testament to that.
His sergeant, a similarly clean-shaven man called Hugh, came over to him. He wore an eye patch; he had lost his eye when it got infected fighting in Arshuma, settling disputes between foreign nobles before this war had even started. Yes, the two of them went back a long way as well.
‘A strange night, is it not?’ Hugh said. ‘Far too warm for the time of year.’
‘It is as the Gods will it,’ said his commander. ‘We have both seen warmer times in winter and colder in summer. You are just bored; you were never one for waiting.’
‘Maybe. I much prefer a stand-up fight to all this sneaking around. I still do not like what we are doing here, fighting our own people. It is an ill omen, I can tell you.’
‘We have no people, Hugh, outside of the army and our unit here.’ He waved his arm in the direction of the other men sitting quietly on the ground, whittling wood with their knives or chewing on a rind of cheese. ‘These people are our country; we look out for each other. What is the difference between a man of Tanaren and Arshuma? Tell me when you find one.’
‘I don’t know. I was never happy with what we did at Wolf Plain and now there is this business with the church. It is almost as if...’
From behind him several men gave a cry; there was wonder in their voices. ‘Look at that! Are the Gods sending a sign?’
Tomas and Hugh stood and walked through the trees before they joined the men who had spoken. All were standing, despite the need for concealment.
The Forgotten War Page 134