by Cass Morris
They had led sorties before, not that it did much good. The invaders turned tail and fled at the first hoofbeat, proving that they were no fools. Tonight, the cavalry had different instructions.
Still the mist rose, higher than any normal fog, rolling like waves against Toletum’s walls, piling on itself until it crested the battlements.
The first few nights, men had dropped to their knees immediately, all their strength overcome by the fiends. Trial and error, though, had helped Vitellius and Mennenius discern that some men were less susceptible, and those were the men who now stood on the walls at night. The rest took day shifts and additional other responsibilities; Vitellius had let it be known that there was no shame in being among those who could not stand against the akdraugi—but they would work their share, all the same.
Still, even the hardier men were not proof against the roiling nausea and mind-swamping horrors that the akdraugi brought with them. Even at a distance, their chill set into Vitellius’s bones. He had never yet succumbed to their power, thanks to the Fire magic in his focale, but that did not mean he was entirely unaffected. The Aventan charm granted enough power to keep his head above the churning magical waters that threatened to drown the other men, but not enough to keep him dry.
Vitellius gripped the wall hard, but more in anger than in agony—anger at the futility of the situation, at his inability to protect anyone but himself. And yet there was power, of a kind, that he could pass on. The men had noticed that the akdraugi could never quite reach Vitellius. He had gotten a reputation for being invincible against them, and while he knew that was not true, he did not wish to dispel the hope that the legionaries drew from his perceived strength. ‘Good Aventan magic.’ If only they had more of it.
Here and there, the mists coagulated, though never into anything like the form of a man or animal. Sometimes demonic faces would appear—or were they only imagined?—sharp and pointed, with fathomless eyes, only to whirl away as the mist throbbed like a beating heart. Then the noise rose, a distant keening—higher than a moan, lower than a whistle. Vitellius gestured sharply to the men standing in the nearest tower: two Arevaci horn-blowers and an Aventan drummer, who set up a jaunty rhythm. It was terribly out of place, this triumphant and sunny tune, played in the dead of night with a haunting mist all around them, but the Arevaci magic-men thought it would help combat the eldritch howls of the akdraugi, and Vitellius was minded to try anything that might negate the fiends’ advantage over them.
Still, the lugubrious wailing was difficult to ignore. Whenever he heard it, Vitellius found himself thinking of funerals, and some nights it seemed as though he were hearing mourners at his own funeral. His mind’s eye conjured images of his father’s careworn face, his sisters’ tears, his own corpse hoisted on a funeral pyre, his own death mask placed among those of his ancestors . . .
With a violent shake of his head, Vitellius forced himself to focus. Dreadful as the akdraugi were, they were not all-powerful. He had kept himself away from the thick of them tonight for this reason: so that he could stand back and see, with a clearer head, their scope.
They were thickest near section eight of the northern wall, and the mist hardly thinned for two sections on either side. From there, though, it grew much more sparse. Hardly more than a wisp moved near the western corner, where the wall met the sharp cliff above the River Tagus. Toward the east, the fog was patchy: here thick, there thin, and shifting. Impossible though it was to pick out a single akdraugo from the whole, clearly, their numbers were finite. They might not have discrete bodies, but they could not stretch themselves indefinitely, either.
‘The Lusetani do not have enough of the fiends to cover the whole wall. Or not enough magic-men to summon them.’ Vitellius wondered which it was—and which the Lusetani might have an easier time procuring more of.
The men atop the walls stood against the akdraugi as long as they could, but what could a legionary do against an enemy that had no body to attack? Even the strongest of them could only hold fast against the miasmic terror for so long. As men began to drop, centurions at the base of the walls gave whistles, ordering them down to recover and fresh men sent up the ladders to replace them. The akdraugi’s effect lessened the farther one got from the walls, though so long as the mist hung in the air, no one could escape it entirely.
This rotation had kept the akdraugi from claiming more than a few lives; Vitellius could not bear to watch men hounded to death by dark magic as those who had died with Mennenius’s cohort had been. But it was then, as the defensive line ran ragged, that the Lusetani charged.
They came from the tree line, and so they should have been visible a long way off, but the mist of the akdraugi concealed them until they were nearly at the base of the walls. Some had ladders; others used hand-picks to scale Toletum’s defenses.
‘If they could remain silent,’ Vitellius thought, ‘they might have a chance of summiting.’ But their enthusiasm for the fight always gave them away. The Lusetani could not seem to keep from whooping their war-cries as they approached, giving the Aventans some warning. The sheer earthiness of it also seemed to call some of the legionaries back to themselves, breaking the spell of the akdraugi enough that they could rally a fight.
The Lusetani concentrated their attack where the akdraugi had been thickest, there at the northern section, for that was where the line of defenders had grown thinnest. Vitellius had given strict orders to the centurions only to pull reinforcements from below, not from other points along the wall; he would not risk creating multiple weak points for the Lusetani to take advantage of. A few enemy warriors avoided the arrows and stones sent their way as they ascended and managed to summit the wall, hurling themselves onto the battlement with victorious cries. Vitellius wanted enough men left hale that such threats could be quickly dealt with.
As swords and shields clashed, as men shouted in fury or in pain, Vitellius looked down at Hanath, whose eyes were fixed only on him, with nary a glance for the hideous mist hanging above her head nor the fighters on the walls. He gave her one sharp nod, gesturing toward the sally gate, and in reply, Hanath raised a fist in the air, drawing the other riders’ attention. Two of the townspeople cranked the gate open for them, and with no cry nor call, Hanath and the two dozen riders behind her rode out of Toletum’s protection. Not toward the attackers on the wall, but rather toward the northeast, away from the tree line, following the river, far away from the fighting. With any luck, the Lusetani would not even notice them go. ‘Mercury give you swift passage, my lady,’ he thought. She might be their only hope of relief.
After that, the skirmish went on as they had almost every night for the past month. During the fighting, the akdraugi grew thinner and thinner until the mist dissipated. Whatever power was used to summon them, it seemed it could not hold them over so large an area for long. ‘Or perhaps at such a distance from the casters . . .’ He wished he knew more, to explain the differences between what Mennenius described and how the akdraugi behaved here, but the Arevaci magic-men were at a loss. So much knowledge lost to time, they said, and perhaps so much invented by the war-king Ekialde’s people. It frustrated Vitellius, but he tried to keep from showing that to the Arevaci. ‘It must feel to them as it would were some mage in Aven suddenly to demonstrate the powers of Hercules or Circe, unlike anything we’ve seen in centuries. We wouldn’t know how to respond to that, either.’
To the Aventans’ advantage, the Lusetani knew even less of siege-craft than the tribes living closer to Tyrian and Aventan settlements. Troops with any idea what they were doing might have stood some chance of scaling Toletum’s walls with the assistance that the akdraugi distraction provided. But the walls would hold; Vitellius had no doubt of that. Over the spring, they had grown by several feet, thanks to the ceaseless labor of his legionaries. The River Tagus wrapped around three sides of the city, leaving the northern approach as the only option for the attackers. Even when the akd
raugi brought many of the defenders to their knees, enough remained to repel the corporeal assault.
‘But,’ Vitellius thought, as he heard the Lusetani horns, calling off the attack. ‘Ekialde might not need to win by frontal assault.’ Vitellius had provisioned Toletum as well as he could, but now they were cut off from the surrounding farms and the coastal towns, reliant only upon their stores and what the gardens within the city could yield. Occasionally, some brave souls would take the switchbacking path down to the river to try to fish below the city, but they could never gather enough before the Lusetani noticed and chased them back up the hill. What cover Vitellius had been able to build along those shallow, rocky paths was not enough to allow the fishermen to ply their trade meaningfully.
‘Neither their warriors nor their fiends alone would be enough to hold us in here,’ Vitellius thought, staring out until the Lusetani disappeared back into the tree line, ‘but together, they make a siege.’ It was clever work, Vitellius had to give the Lusetani that.
Vitellius, Mennenius, and the quartermasters had done the math. Two months, and then Toletum’s provisions would run low; three, and they would be in danger of starving.
‘And then what?’ Vitellius yanked off his helmet and flung it aside, then rubbed irritably at his hair, near-plastered to his head with sweat. ‘Turn out the civilians whose home this is? Try and fight our way through a few thousand barbarians, while hoping their wretched fiends don’t snatch our souls?’
He had sent Hanath and the cavalry out to find help, whether Aventan or Iberian, but there was another benefit: getting the horses out of the city would stretch the food stores a little longer.
‘She’ll find help. She has to. She’ll be able to tell the governors what to expect. They can smash into the Lusetani from behind, and this nightmare will end.’
The last letter Vitellius had received before Ekialde cut off the messengers’ routes had promised that help was on its way. Vitellius could not spare the meat for a sacrifice, but he prayed daily to Mars and Jupiter that it would come soon enough. And he had sent letters out with Hanath, too—including another to his sister, since the courier bearing the first had never returned, likely never reached the coast. Another letter, telling Latona not only of the akdraugi, but what had happened with the focale she had woven for him, how it protected him even now—and begging her, if she could, to send a little more of that Aventan magic his way.
* * *
Lusetani Camp, Outside Toletum
He could only pretend the eldritch howls did not trouble him.
The first time Bailar had summoned the spirits, Ekialde had nearly jumped out of his skin. Fortunately, the rest of his war-band had been too similarly alarmed to notice his momentary lapse in control. He had asked for horrors worthy of wringing out Aventan souls, and Bailar had delivered, far beyond what Ekialde could have thought to ask for. And this—this worked so much better than the potion he had tried to use on the Aventan leader.
Now, he stood at the front of his war-band, unflinching, as the dread spirits rose not from the earth but through it, summoned from their homes in the netherworld and condensing in the hot Iberian air.
Bailar promised it would only get better, the more they had the fresh blood of their enemies to work with. Old blood was weaker, and the blood of farmers summoned less vigorous spirits than that of warriors. Ekialde had witnessed that; however harrowing the specters, they lost cohesion after a few moments. Bailar had worked around that by staggering his summonings, lengthening the effect. He assured Ekialde, though, that once they broke the siege and had the fresh lifeblood of Aventan legionaries, his spirits would linger much longer. ‘The Aventans would have to be made of much sterner stuff to endure that.’
He knew he should be glad. Bailar was delivering what he asked, a way to rout deadly Aventan steel and their possibly deadlier discipline. Yet something about it niggled at the back of his mind, tugging at his conscience. Would Bandue approve? A voice in his mind asked if this was right and proper, if the gods sanctioned such use of the magical gifts they gave.
The voice quite often sounded like his wife’s.
It troubled some of his allies, too; the Lusetani trusted him, but the Vettoni had begun to whisper. Iberian magic typically relied on the stars, the trees, the rivers. Magic-men read the will of the gods and reported it to the chieftains and their warriors. They did not intervene in these matters themselves. Seeing what Bailar was doing made many of the southern and eastern tribes uneasy, and sometimes, in quiet moments, alone with his thoughts, Ekialde could not silence the questions he had about this path’s rightness.
‘Just because no one has used magic in this way in some time does not mean it is improper,’ he told himself. ‘Bailar is gifted. Endovelicos has smiled on him, as Bandue has smiled on me. We are exceptional men in an exceptional time.’
* * *
The main camp was downriver, around a bend to the west, though Ekialde kept his war-band camping in the forest just outside Toletum. The women, the magic-men who were not summoning the akdraugi, and other hangers-on stayed further off, and it was from that camp that Ekialde also dispatched the raiding bands, both Lusetani and those of the tribes who had allied with them. While he kept his strongest warriors focused on besieging Toletum, he sent parties out to harass the local villages—what remained of them, at least. The Vettoni had already picked clean or burned much of the surrounding terrain, and those who had thus far escaped death or slavery had fled to the arms of the Aventans. Many were now sheltering in Toletum; others had gone further south and east, out of the mountains and toward the port towns. The raiding parties had to go further afield now, and they returned to seek Ekialde’s direction less frequently.
‘If my husband does not break this siege soon, or find new territory to plunder,’ Neitin thought, looking at the fractious assembly, ‘some of these allies may cease to return here at all. They will grow bored and wander back to their homes—or go looking for new trouble to make on their own.’
Neitin paced up and down the length of the camp, with her infant boy swaddled tightly to her chest. There was more activity than usual today; some of the raiders were packing up goods and slaves to transport back to their hometowns, or to the northern and western port cities, those not yet subject to Aventan control. A knot of captured Cossetan civilians stood in the hot sun, their expressions varying between dull and mutinous. ‘More of our neighbors’ blood on my husband’s hands.’ For all that Ekialde preached of ridding Iberia of the Tyrians and Aventans, most of the true fighting had involved other Iberians, those whom Ekialde deemed traitors. Their crime: maintaining too friendly a relationship with the traders from the east.
The Cossetans were one of the tribes who made their home along the Baetis River, as it wound its way down to the Tyrian-turned-Aventan port of Gades. Neitin had not known so much geography before her husband began his Bandue-bestowed mission, but she had had cause to learn, and this observation concerned her. ‘I did not think they were raiding so far south as Cossetan territory.’ Would Ekialde turn his full attention there, if they broke Toletum? Would they march on Gades itself? Neitin knew almost nothing of that city, save that it was said to be both ancient and extremely well-fortified.
She sighed, gazing over the Cossetans. ‘Foolishness, all of it. We have plunder enough to satisfy us for years. If we went home now, the Aventans might be happy to see the back of us and just leave us be.’ But even as she thought it, Neitin knew things had gone too far for that. ‘We abandoned hope for clemency when Bailar summoned his fiends against the Aventans. They will not forget that, nor forgive it.’
As Neitin started to turn away from the Cossetans, one woman caught her eye. She was perhaps forty years old, skinny and pale as the moon, with glossy black hair hanging in limp ringlets around her face. Her eyes had a touch of yellow mixed in their hazel. Not as much as Ekialde’s, which could look golden in a certain light, but
something in them compelled Neitin’s attention. The woman lifted her hands—bound at the wrist and tied to the women on either side of her—and gestured Neitin to approach her. When she did, Neitin saw dark patches on her arms. ‘Burns, or scars?’ But no; when she looked closer, she could see they were the patterned markings that the magic-men and magic-women inked into their skin. Neitin’s heart beat faster, recognizing them, as the woman continued to beckon her.
Curiosity brought Neitin forward, though good sense had her stop a few steps away.
“Handsome lad,” the woman said, giving the boy an appraising look. “How old?”
“Nearly four months,” Neitin answered.
“Oof.” The woman clucked her tongue in sympathy. “It was a hard winter to bear a child in.”
Neitin suspected it would not have been so hard had she been at home, in a warm and cozy mud-bricked house, not in a tent in the wilds. She bounced the boy a bit; he seemed to be enjoying the stranger’s attention.
“Have you named him yet?”
Neitin had, but only in her own heart, and she was not willing to share that information with a magic-woman belonging to what Ekialde had decided was an enemy tribe. “We’re going to have his naming ceremony at the solstice.”
“Mm. Auspicious day for it,” the woman said, nodding. “Pick a good one. Poor lad’s going to need it.”
Instinctively, Neitin’s arms tightened around her child. “What do you mean?” The woman shrugged, but Neitin would not be dissuaded. “I saw the markings on your arms. You are one of the magic-women of the Cossetans, are you not?”
“I am.” The woman’s eyes had a shrewd look to them. “Or I was. Who knows what I will be, when these traders tear me away from the soil and rivers of my home?” She nodded at the boy. “But I’ve seen enough to know that child will need as much strength as the gods can give him.”