Ardent

by Florian Armas

I have to wait. Fate likes to test our patience. Patience is a virtue. Eyes closed, I let my other senses take over. Nothing... There was no wind, no sound, no smell. And no more flow through my body. Sometimes, you feel several futures competing for your attention. Only one will survive, and the excitement is great when you can decide which future dies and which lives, as great as your responsibility.

  Lost in my thoughts, I failed to sense the first tremor; its memory came to me later, when I was out of the trance again. A strong underground shock caught me by surprise. The land shook like a wild horse, and I fought hard to keep standing. Under my feet, the barren land cracked, a hundred times louder than a popping cork. The crack widened fast, and I had to roll to my left to avoid falling into it. Crouched on the edge, I could see the precipice splitting the landscape into two neat parts, growing larger, moment by moment. Umbra flew over the crack, trying to see something that was avoiding me. The Fracture. But my interpretation of the vision might have sprung from the influence of Valera’s words. Testing the future is both vision and interpretation, and the last comes from experience, trial and error. Then the mist, which had haunted me for some months already, emerged from the precipice. I glanced around, but Umbra was no longer in sight. It must be the Fracture. There was no other way to interpret the mist’s presence in my visions. Pouring out like vapors from an angry volcano, the mist filled the world in stripes of different colors. They swirled around me, and their tendrils rasped against my skin. The red ones were the roughest, and the most difficult to change. One, two ... seven, I counted. I have never seen so many. It makes no sense. I could not understand their meaning. Denser and denser they grew, darker, until I could not see my fingers. Then everything vanished, and I was back my room. Two swords lay on the table. Assassins: I touched the curved blade. Arenian: I touched the second weapon, the cold steel freezing my fingers. Was Codrin defeated? Is he wounded? Dead?

  The image shifted again, to Severin, this time. Saliné and Codrin were dancing an unknown dance to some muffled music. It sounded like a funeral march. Arenian? My curiosity overrode the strangeness. Each time Codrin advanced toward Saliné, she turned her back to him. When she advanced, Codrin turned away from her. “Is Codrin dead?” I asked loudly, breaking the Rules, hoping in vain for a persona to come and answer me. None came, and the Light vanished in silence, leaving me alone in my room. My real room.

  Chapter 3 – Codrin

  The last council before the battle. Vlaicu, the Chief of the Guard and Bucur. Vlad. Ban and Valer, the mercenary captain hired by Mohor. All waiting for me to speak. Except for Bucur, all the others had fought with me in Mehadia, some months before. The sun was climbing up behind us, making some blades spark in the valley; the S’Arads had to fight with their eyes against the sunlight.

  Nothing can be left to chance. Our trap was mired by chance. It could work or not. Bucur could betray us. “We must change the battle plan,” I said, staring at Orban’s army. Larger. Better soldiers. “Bucur, you attack first. Charge toward their right wing. When you get to the white stones that we used to mark half way to the trap, change course and attack the center.”

  “Wings attack wings,” Bucur protested.

  Do you feel what I want? Treachery against treachery? I stared at him. Not a challenge; there was just a touch of doubt and pity. “Wings fight where we need them. Are you capable of delivering what we need?” My eyes left him, settling on the dawn horizon, but I did not hide the menace in my wry smile.

  “Yes.” His words came out as a rattle, a hiss, haste carrying through his voice. Or hate.

  Have I spoiled your betrayal? “Vlaicu, you take over the center. Pick ten more soldiers from Bucur’s wing. After Bucur passes the white stones, you charge their left wing from our right. Give Ban fifteen soldiers from your guards. You will move to the right wing,” I glanced at Ban.

  “Valer, keep only your soldiers and Ban’s guards on the right wing, all others move to the center.” His mercenaries were our best soldiers, followed by Vlaicu’s guards. Disciplined too.

  “Vlad, you come with me on the right. We will ride around that small hillock,” I pointed to the right side of the battlefield. “It will keep us out of sight for a while. Then we will fall on the back of their left flank. If all goes well, we should break their wings, and only the center will stand. This is not a fight to kill, but a fight to break them. The faster, the better. We need our soldiers to defend Severin.”

  “No one wants to die in battle,” Valer laughed. “So it’s not free kill after breaking them.”

  “I did not say that.” Let’s win first. Down, on the other side of the valley, the drums began to beat. Orban’s army moved to form its battle lines. “It’s time. Let’s break them.”

  Don’t second guess; let the future come to you. Yes, Dochia, but who would not like a tip to sway the future?

  Walking slowly, Bucur and Valer turned away. At the last moment, I signaled for Valer to stay.

  “If our trap doesn’t function,” I said, casually. One way or another, the world will move forward.

  “I was wondering when you would touch on that,” Vlaicu said, thoughtfully. “It will break us.”

  “Yes. The clash will become a massacre, not a fight, so we must refuse battle and retreat. You take the center and run through the forest behind us. Led them to Severin and wait for me in the meadow behind the hill harboring my house.” Let’s hope that I will make it.

  “And you?” Vlaicu asked.

  “We will cover your back.”

  “I wish to know more about that,” Valer said.

  “We will ride in the parallel with the forest, toward the Teeth,” I pointed left, to a string of white lime rocks resembling huge teeth, thirty feet high. “Under the rocks, there is a narrow path, no more than three horses can ride abreast. Your men and Severin’s guards will enter first. Vlad and I will form the rearguard. The path splits after three hundred paces. You take the left fork, until you reach the ridge. Leave the horses and climb for safety.”

  “Time will be short,” Valer said, disquiet gleaming in his eyes “I don’t say that it can’t be done,” he added quickly. “It’s better than confronting them in an open field anyway.”

  “Three archers are hidden on the Teeth; they will delay Orban’s riders. Some of your riders are archers too. They should be the first ones to climb the ridge, and cover the rest.”

  “And you?” Valer gestured toward me and Vlad.

  “We have better horses.”

  “What about them?” Vlaicu did not name Bucur or our left wig, but he didn’t need to.

  “If our trap fails, Bucur will turn against us and join Orban. That’s why you must leave only Aron’s men in the left wing. Go now.”

  Looking over the valley, I waited a while until everybody took position. Standing in the saddle, I raised my hand, and our drums answered Orban’s. In the center, behind Vlaicu, Severin’s banner was raised. Our drums changed tune, patterns of drumbeat and silence. Slowly, the soldiers on the field entered into a fighting trance; their grips hardened on cold steel. They trotted, beating their chests. Some shouted insults. Some cried Fate’s name. Some remained silent.

  A cry went up from Orban’s soldiers. “Arad! Arad!”

  “Severin!” erupted behind me. I raised my left hand twice, then pointed forward. Now, Bucur, let’s see what you do.

  Our left wing moved gradually, then gained speed, accelerating down-slope. It looked rather small. No discipline. The riders spread in an arc across the field.

  Moments later, Orban’s right wing seemed to move too. At first, it looked like a wrong impression, like a tremolo, horses trotting on the spot, hitting the ground with nervous hooves. They gathered their lines, narrowed the spaces between the horses, and raised their swords.

  “Arad! Arad!”

  “Severin!”

  Horns blew in the valley. The S’Arads started to move, slowly at first, then faster, line after line. One instant, a line was motionless, th
en it moved, then the next one. And the next one. From this distance, through the slight mist of the morning, it looked like a moving carpet created from the fingers of a skilled weaver. Horses and men depicted with strange accuracy, competing against each other for a better spot. A sword was raised here, a spear there. In some thick patches of mist, only the spears were visible. Dangerous toys, the size of a child’s arm, shaken by the invisible hands of hidden ghosts. A faint drumbeat came to us, hooves hitting the ground in twisted cadence, a distant echo answering our own cavalry’s charge. Slowly, the sound grew, and the sight of Arad soldiers too, and their horses. Details came to me in flashes: a colorful helmet, a horse’s shaking head, the reflection of a raised sword. Too far to see faces... They will only haunt me in my dreams. The carpet, flowing now like a mountain river, swift and deadly, hit the valley floor, ready to climb toward our left wing.

  “Arad!”

  “Severin!”

  Their cavalry was more disciplined, the lines almost geometrical, ten riders in a row. Even the first line was almost compact, only half a horse length between its first and last riders. Now, I bit my lip in expectation. The kind of expectation whose result separate victory from defeat. It flows through your veins like poison. And you wait.

  The first horse faltered. There is always a first horse, even in the most disciplined army.

  “Arad! Arad!”

  No battle cry answered them, all our soldiers mute and watching.

  “Arad! Arad!” Our silence encouraged them.

  Bucur’s wing arrived at the white stones, and started to turn right, slowly. He is waiting... The faltering horse of the S’Arad rider went down. Not down on the ground, but deeper. Its forelegs disappeared, its body rotated, head down, the next thing to vanish from our sight. The horse neighed in desperation. Arms up, the horseman lost his sword, his hands trying to grasp some pieces of wood flying from our trap, his body catapulted forward by an invisible force. Others followed. In a few moments, nothing remained of either riders or horses. Orban’s first line of soldiers went down in the trap before realizing what had happened. Bucur’s wing turned right abruptly and attacked the S’Arads’ center.

  “Severin!”

  Some riders of their second line reigned hard on horses to stop, some tried to get to the side of the trap. The third line crashed in on them, driven by their own momentum, and the slippery wet grass. A little rain may help. Fate had helped us with the small amount of rain we needed. More riders fell, almost in silence. The ones escaping to the side seemed to be luckier, but they hadn’t ridden far enough, and the underground opened for them too; a dark, silent mouth. The hundred-fifty-feet-long crevasse we had covered with wood and skins and patches of grass was working well.

  On our side of the crevasse, five archers rose from the tall grass. Protected by the gap in the ground, they shot arrow after arrow. What the crevasse could not accomplish, the arrows did.

  I raised my left hand twice again, and Vlaicu moved the center down into the battle, my eyes following them until they arrived at the imaginary line marked by the white stones.

  “Ride!” I shouted, rising in the saddle, half turned toward the men on the right wing. “Ride hard. The battle is ours to win.”

  Behind the hillock, we lost track of the clash. It appeared again after two more minutes of galloping. Orban’s left wing had been almost crushed by Vlaicu, and we fell on them like lightning. Whatever will was still left in their wing vanished in that moment, soldiers faltering back in unworldly retreat, and once they started to run, they would not turn to fight again. The first man who turned his back to the fight had five more men at his heels, then five times five. They crumbled in minutes. Even as their center stood, the wings of the enemy army almost vanished; in the crevasse, under pressure from the front and death coming from the side. Their last line was the quickest to run and escape. The ones in front missed that chance, and we cut down through them.

  “Free to kill!” I screamed, when it was clear that the S’Arads were running, no longer fighting. Slaughter is our road now.

  A good sword always amplifies your senses, and there is nothing better than an Assassins’ sword in a battle. Even with closed eyes, you know when the blade cuts armor, bones or flesh. You know when it crushes a skull, a shoulder or a helmet. You always know. Not that you want to know, but you know, and you still press forward.

  In minutes, our lines stretched, following the desperate remnants of a routed army. I pushed Zor to gallop until all our riders were left behind, and I turned. In front of me, dead soldiers outnumbered the still living.

  Free to kill. “Give no more pursuit!” I shouted. “Re-form the lines, and go back. Make camp. Commanders, to me.”

  Vlaicu was slightly wounded on the left shoulder, Bucur and Vlad also had minor wounds; only Valer, Ban and I escaped unscathed. Two scratches on my biceps from the broken rings of the chainmail and one on Valer’s front could not be honored with the name of wounds. Are you alright? I glanced at Vlaicu, who nodded silently, pressing his right hand on the mail over his wound.

  “Valer, gather the wounded,” I ordered; he had better healers in his team. “Ban, send three couriers to Severin, maybe they will be able to reach the city before Orban’s second army lays siege to it, and count their thick skulls; I want to know the score.” The macabre joke extracted some guffaws, or at least a grin from our soldiers; everybody knew that the S’Arads had lost many more men than us in the battle.

  Wandering over the ruins of the battlefield, I arrived at the crevasse, through the wailing of men who would be dead soon. More than thirty, I thought after searching from one corner to another, through the remnants of the cover we had built over it. Another ten were downed by arrows on the southern ridge.

  “The Great Quake helped us,” Vlaicu spoke behind me. “I did not have time to tell you the story. In the final years of the last King, an earthquake made Frankis tremble; one like no other before. That bad omen brought us the civil war. It created many earth wounds like this,” he pointed to the crevasse. “Some of them much larger. Mostly in the south. I was a child when I saw the Dark Mouth, a crevasse several hundred feet wide, and ten miles long. But maybe this is the dawn of a new era.” Like many others, Vlaicu still hoped for the peace and order a new King could restore.

  “Hope is the last thing to die,” I smiled, and he nodded in silence. “Let’s see what Ban brings to us.” He was coming fast, the speed of a man bringing good news.

  “We have thirty wounded. I am not talking about small cuts. And forty-six dead. They lost over a hundred seventy men,” Ban boasted. “It was hard to count the ones in there,” he pointed down into the crevasse.

  “Burry our dead on the eastern side of the crevasse,” I ordered. It was only seven feet wide at that end, and not very deep. “Burn their dead.”

  At noon, we lit the pyre, which drew all the scattered soldiers, and became the center of our world. Soldiers stood to tell their stories, to dance in the rhythms of the drums and sing, their voices merging with the melancholic flutes; a time of joy, and a time of mourning. I let them have their time, but in the afternoon, most of them came with me to Severin. Only those with bad wounds stayed behind, with ten soldiers to protect them. Ban remained to lead the troop.

  We arrived late in the morning of the next day, and found Severin under siege; Orban’s second army was already there. Our scouts told us that they had made camp just one turn before we arrived. Our couriers should be in Severin. At some distance from the walls, Orban’s soldiers were assembling three catapults and two assault towers. They will wait for their other army to arrive before attacking. It will not happen, I smiled.

  It did not make sense to attack frontally Orban’s second army; it was almost three times larger. We cut their lines of supply and caught all their couriers coming or going from their camp. On one morning, we tried a brief thing, attacking when they were mostly asleep, and we retreated fast, before they could gather their lines. There were some ski
rmishes when they sent a few companies out for pillage, but most of the time I spent circling around the camped army, waiting for Cantemir. I trusted Dochia that he would come to negotiate the ‘surrender’ of Severin.

  Two days later, through the spyglass, I recognized Cantemir, riding at a steady pace among other ten guards from Arad. It was too far to read anything on his face, but they were riding neither in haste nor at leisure, the speed of determined men. Ten minutes, I calculated the time of their arrival at the foot of the hill I had chosen as an observation point – it offered a good view over the sinuous road coming along the small river. Packing my spyglass, I gestured to Vlaicu to come closer.

  “We have guests,” I said in a low voice, only for him. His brows moved into the shape of high arches, but he stayed silent. “Cantemir, and ten soldiers.”

  “We are thirty,” Vlaicu said thoughtfully. “It will be done fast.”

  “I don’t want to capture him.” His brows arched even more, and I almost smiled. “Cantemir is here for negotiations. I wager that his expectations will be cut short soon. We need this treaty more than Orban. It must be done in good faith, or he will renege on it. Cantemir is the only person who can sign the paper and convince Orban to keep to it. He is...” I glanced a bit uneasily at Vlaicu, “the Master Sage of the Circle.”

  “So, it’s true that we fight not only Orban. I’ve heard some rumors.”

  “They are true. No need for anyone else to know,” I gestured toward the soldiers. “It will lower the morale.” I stared at him, and he nodded. He looked to me like a convinced man. “I want to know if he has learned of their defeat. We blocked the roads, but you never know.”

  “I wish that too,” Vlaicu laughed. “Just to see his face when we give him the news. I wish to see Orban’s face even more. The Beast’s fury must be a delight.”

  “Orban may be named the Beast, but he is as intelligent as he is evil. I will go down with Vlad and Pintea to meet Cantemir. Maybe I can learn something, and help Mohor to negotiate.”