by Cass Morris
Splinter the Third
No one knew better than a Fracture mage how impossible a thing a plan was. “It won’t work how they think,” Corinna whispered to the floor. She hardly saw the images, laid out in neatly placed tiles. She saw the grout in between, the white lines between glossy vermilion and shining cerulean. She saw the chipped edges, the missing square. “It may get them what they want, maybe, maybe, but it won’t work how they think.”
Such an easy thing to break, a plan. So simple to warp.
A battle plan could go awry with one wrong-footed horse, one frightened man, one dull blade.
She should have known, really. Off she had fled, to work her little wonders, but it hadn’t gone as planned. Something—someone—had intervened. She’d nearly been found. She’d had to move, out of isolation and back into the crowded, hustling, noisy world. Were there more broken things, here? Or simply a different kind? Corinna couldn’t decide. Her work was harder in some ways here, easier in others.
All a plan was, really, was the desire of mortals to feel like they had some control. “But we never do.” She ran her fingers over the bump where a tile had been cracked but mortared into place anyway.
The touch of Discordia was everywhere, why did so few understand? Corinna knew it instinctively. “Silly men, silly women,” she said, shaking her head in dismay.
XIX
Near Toletum, Central Iberia
Three legions waited on the edge of the woods a few miles from Toletum.
The path through the forest was blocked, Sempronius’s forces had discovered, not by a fighting force, but by a cluster of men in robes of blue and green, nearly blending in to the trees. “Magic-men,” one scout reported, riding back. “Twenty or so. I don’t see signs of any warriors with them. Not immediately near them, at least.”
“They remained safe on their side of the forest,” Sempronius said, “and sent these men out to prevent our passage through.”
Sempronius considered. He had three legions at his back, lined up in the ocher dust of the Iberian plateau. The river lay immediately to their east, perhaps a hundred paces away. Before them, a line of trees, which Lady Hanath assured him was scarce more than a mile thick. On the other side of that, the walls of Toletum—and the Lusetani horde besieging the city. In theory, his action now would be simple: cross the forest, thus pinning the Lusetani between the walls and the advancing army, and then crush their foes. That was the way breaking a siege worked.
Sempronius did not believe it would be so straightforward this time.
The mages were not there for no reason, and if Ekialde had not sent warriors to reinforce them, he clearly believed that, whatever they were doing, it would be enough to stymie the legions’ progress.
Sempronius worked his jaw. There was no true way to know what the Lusetani magic-men would do, what havoc they could wreak, without marching against them and meeting their defense. But to do so was to stride boldly into a trap. An unsubtle stratagem, but still a difficult one for a commander to work his way around without offering up some sort of victory to his opponent.
It galled him, to know that Toletum was so close, yet to be rendered unable to charge to its immediate relief.
“Tell the centurions to make camp,” he told Felix. “I want to see what these magic-men will do. Then return to my tent, once it’s up.” He looked to Corvinus. “Fetch Onidius, Calpurnius, and the Lady Hanath. I want to discuss a plan of attack before we do anything else.”
* * *
A sense of unease filled the camp, like the air before a thunderstorm. The legionaries went about their work as though looking over their shoulders, wondering when the magic-men would send their mysterious fog or some other uncanny horror. Yet through the early evening, nothing happened.
Hanath was the last to join the group in Sempronius’s tent. She and a group of riders had been testing the boundaries of the forest, seeing how close they could get before the Lusetani magic-men appeared.
“Lady Hanath,” he said, gesturing her to where he, Felix, Onidius, Calpurnius, and Corvinus were gathered around a table, “if you would be so good as to join us.” Impatience was written in her features, and Sempronius felt a pinch of sympathy for her. It could not have been easy, to leave her husband behind in a city besieged by demons. “We’ve been compiling the information from our scouting detachments to try to create some semblance of a map, but I imagine you have even better information.”
“I shall try, General,” she said, and took the stylus that Corvinus proffered to her. With Hanath’s adjustments, the map took greater shape. The Tagus River wriggled back and forth through the terrain like a Gorgon’s hair, and Toletum sat nestled at the southernmost end of a particularly deep bend. The Aventan legions had approached from almost due east, at first, then had hugged the river as it cut suddenly south. Crossing the river was one option, though not an ideal one. The riverbanks were so steep that they would have to backtrack before they could find a good crossing, and then likely come across much further west—perhaps surrounded by the Lusetani.
“The city here,” Sempronius said, thinking aloud. He pointed to the deepest part of the Tagus’s curling bend. “The Lusetani here, out of arrow range.”
“The Lusetani warriors there,” Hanath corrected. “They have a larger camp downriver.”
Sempronius arched an eyebrow. “Noncombatants?”
“Many, we believe,” Hanath said, “though I have not seen for myself to confirm.” Sempronius flicked his eyes to Onidius, then Felix, and they nodded their understanding. Scouts would need to be sent westward. “They have brought civilians along with them. Women who do not fight, older men, their star-readers and other magic-men. Slaves, both those they had already and those they have taken from other tribes.” She scowled, no doubt at the idea that there would be Arevaci held in Lusetani fetters. “And, we believe, it is from this larger camp that Ekialde dispatches his raiders.”
“How far downriver?”
One lean shoulder lifted in a shrug. “At least this far,” she said, pointing to another place where the Tagus careened south, then west again, sluicing almost at right angles through the rocky terrain. “But perhaps farther.”
Sempronius nodded. “All right. Toletum. The field of battle. The Lusetani warriors, encamped. Then, this stretch of forest, and us in the middle of it. Lady Hanath, does this forest stretch all the way to where the river cuts north again?” She nodded, and Sempronius smiled. “We might be able to turn that to our advantage. They have blocked our passage here, but what if we divert their attention?” His fingers sketched out his plan on the map. “I want to send the Eighth and the Fourteenth north, back into the hills.”
Onidius arched an eyebrow. “Away from the river? We’ll run out of water fast, especially in this heat.”
“You can carry enough with you for what I have planned. I don’t want to send you far—just enough so that the Lusetani won’t immediately know where you’re going. Onidius and the Eighth should continue all the way to the far side of the peninsula, along the Tagus again. Calpurnius and the Fourteenth will cut back down the middle of the peninsula here.” A grim smile crept onto his face. “Let’s see if Ekialde has enough of these damned magic-men to raise fiends against three separate forces.” He sighed. “I wish I had an Air mage to attach to each legion, but we’ll have to make do with horse couriers. We must stay in communication—every attack, magical or otherwise, all three of us need to know about.”
Calpurnius nodded agreement, but Onidius looked concerned. “How long do you intend that we hold these positions?”
“Long enough to garner the information we need to attack,” Sempronius answered. “Their numbers, their patterns of magical interference, how often they send for reinforcements from their western camp—and you’ll be in the best position to determine that, Onidius. We’ll coordinate when we have a better sense of their movements.” He lo
oked up, out past his tent flaps, as though he could gaze down the via praetoria, beyond the forest, to the walls of Toletum itself. “I wish I could get word to Tribune Vitellius to let him know that we’re here, let alone what we plan, but I don’t want to risk the bird getting shot down.”
“Maybe if we can distract them sufficiently?” Felix offered. The grin that crept over his face was not quite the same as the one that charmed hearts across Aven’s seven hills, but it had a confident appeal of its own. “They tried a feint on us with those damned spirits. Let’s show them a feint of our own.”
Sempronius smiled, glad to see Felix thinking strategically. “I like it.” He looked to Onidius and Calpurnius. “Let’s make one big push before we split our forces. It will give us the chance to test their strength, but we’ll back off swiftly. I’ll send Eustix with Lady Hanath and the cavalry, to get as close as they can.”
But Hanath was shaking her head. “He has too many men on the lookout. We tried to get birds out during skirmishes—just ordinary pigeons, of course, not driven by your magic-men—but Ekialde always kept archers ready.” She spun the map to look at it more closely. “If we were to ford the river with the messenger—here, perhaps.” Her dark finger jabbed at a point a little ways back from their present position, where the bluffs on the riverbanks had not been as high. “Then we could release the bird from the other side of the river, close to the city, here.” She looked up at Sempronius through her eyelashes. “The Lusetani would not see it coming.”
“One message now, to give them hope and to tell Vitellius to be on the lookout,” Sempronius said, “and another, if you can manage to cross the river again at the appropriate time, to coordinate the attack.” He rubbed at his chin with the back of one hand. “Though I grant that may be more difficult, perhaps impossible.”
“We shall do it if we can, General,” Hanath said, with a decisive nod. “Tribune Vitellius has been stalwart and brave. He has endured much that he did not expect since arriving in Iberia. He deserves as much aid as you can give, as quickly as you can give it.”
* * *
As dawn broke over the Tagus River, Hanath and a cavalry unit had doubled back to the ford and crossed to the southern side, taking a wide route to avoid coming within eyesight of any Lusetani or Vettoni scouts. He had given her a mixed group—her own Arevaci along with the cavalry attached to the Fourteenth legion—and then redistributed portions of the Eighth and Tenth cavalry over to the Fourteenth. A sweating Eustix was nestled in their midst, with two trained birds clinging to his shoulders and two copies of Sempronius’s message tucked in a saddlebag. ‘At least the man knows how to ride,’ Sempronius thought, though being able to keep a seat and being able to keep up with Hanath’s thunderous pace might prove different skills.
As soon as the sun was up, intense heat began baking the plateau. Many of these men would be unfazed; anyone who had served in Numidia had learned how to handle wearing full armor no matter how relentless the heat. Sempronius worried most about the Eighth, men who had spent their service in the northern territories. He hoped they had sufficiently acclimated during their journey south.
Fourteen thousand men in full battle array. An impressive sight anywhere, but the blazing sunlight cast a gleam on all those helmets and plates, and though the breeze blasted like an oven, it also set their banners to snapping, their crimson and gold streaking the morning light.
His commanders knew their role: attack, see what the Lusetani magic-men would do, and then, when the akdraugi became unbearable, retreat. He wanted it to look as chaotic as possible, as though the encounter terrified his men into breaking ranks and fleeing for the hills. The scouts reported that there were still no Lusetani warriors in close range, so their retreat should not be vulnerable—but the magic-men would report back to their war-king, and perhaps then, when they engaged in true combat, the Lusetani would underestimate the Aventans.
Sempronius only hoped that, whatever the Lusetani magic-men had in store, the disordered retreat would remain no more than an act.
He nodded to Felix, who in turn gave the centurions their orders. At a series of sharp whistles, up and down the lines, fourteen thousand men began to march in unison. It shook the earth beneath them, and their armor clashed and banged in a strange symphony.
The Lusetani magic-men were not slow in responding. Wherever they were, hidden behind the tree line, they soon had the bright day turning gray around the legions. The heat of high summer dropped in an instant to a clammy chill, and the same fog that they had encountered before rolled out of the forest, its advance curling like a wave hitting shore.
As Sempronius watched, the mist both thickened and darkened, swiftly turning from wispy light gray to a smoky shadow. Then it began to coalesce, taking sharp, angular forms. The akdraugi did not quite have the shapes of men, nor beasts, but they had their own cohesion, jagged and haunting. It confirmed one of Sempronius’s theories. ‘They are stronger, here, closer to the men who summoned them.’ His mind worked swiftly, trying to dismiss or consider other variables, even as the legions continued to march. ‘What else . . . Could they be taking power from the trees, like the Tennic tribes in the north do? The wind is at their back, perhaps enabling them to move faster. We are the same distance from the river. It’s broad daylight, so they need not only act in darkness—but the moon still moves. It’s just past new now. It was waning gibbous when we first encountered them.’
These matters fascinated him intellectually as much as they were important to him for strategic purposes. ‘I would know more about your magic, Iberia. May your gods and mine give me the chance to learn.’
* * *
Inside Toletum
Vitellius felt like he knew every street and sidepath in Toletum by now—to say nothing of every citizen, at least by face, if not by name. He walked, every day, every night, from one end of the city to the other, from the haunted walls in the north to the riverside bluffs in the south, in the hopes that it might help him feel less useless.
Rarely did it make much of a difference.
Toletum was large by Iberian standards, but walking it end to end was like walking from the Forum to the Campus Martius at home, only a section of the larger city. Some days, Toletum’s walls felt like they were closing in on him in reproach for his failure to dispel the Lusetani. ‘I was sent south to learn what was happening here,’ he thought, glaring at the western wall with the rising sun already baking his back. ‘And I suppose I’ve done that . . . But what sort of Aventan commander lets himself be netted like a hind bayed in by hounds?’
He raised both hands to the back of his neck, then scrubbed them through his gingery hair—too long, but standards did slip under siege. He knew, really, that this was no fault of his, that no Aventan legion could have entered this realm prepared for what the Lusetani had unleashed. But he was Gaius Vitellius, son of an ancient patrician family, and he had his pride. He should have known better. Should have figured something out by now, some escape or stratagem.
“Vitellius!”
At Mennenius’s shout, Vitellius broke into a panicked run. The akdraugi usually attacked at dusk or in the night, but they had come in full daylight before. Vitellius suspected the Lusetani magic-men knew how much more easily terrors could creep into the human heart in the dead of night and typically pressed that psychic advantage—but they released the akdraugi even under the brightest sun, too, just to prove that they could, that daylight was no safeguard against the demons.
But as he drew nearer, he saw that Mennenius’s face was not alarmed, but grinning broadly. He had something in each hand—scrolls.
“Vitellius! We’ve had birds—They came up over the south wall—”
Eyes wide with a hope he dared not voice, Vitellius grabbed for the scrolls. His heart leapt to see a seal that he recognized: a falcon in flight rendered in black wax, the seal of Sempronius Tarren, from whom he had received correspondence the p
revious year. “Dear sweet Mercury,” he exhaled as he tore the seal open and unfurled the scroll as rapidly as he could, “let this message be what we need to hear.”
The letter was short, and though it was not quite in code, it was terse enough to have likely stymied any Truscan-reading foes, should it have fallen into their hands.
“VIII, X, XIV N. Fenced by lemures. Lady H well. Be alert. V. Semp.”
A half-strangled laugh escaped Vitellius. “They’re here.” He closed his eyes, whispering prayers of thanks to Mars and Mercury and Jupiter, all together. “The gods have smiled on us at last, Mennenius. Sempronius Tarren is here with three legions—and our own Eighth is among them. Where’s Bartasco?”
“Here, Tribune.” The Iberian had also come running at Mennenius’s shout.
Vitellius grasped Bartasco’s shoulder. “I told you they would come. I told you Aven would not abandon us. And—” He showed the letter to Bartasco, even though he knew the man could not read Truscan script. “Your wife is with our general. She’s well!”
Bartasco’s hand landed heavily on Vitellius’s shoulder in return, and tears sprang to the man’s eyes. “Thank the gods,” he breathed, sagging with gratitude.
Vitellius’s breath was coming hard with excitement—with the sense that now, finally, their stalemate might be broken. He tore open the second letter, in case it had different tidings, but found an identical message. Sempronius was no fool: of course he would have sent more than one bird, in case one didn’t make it. But two had gotten through. Heartening, that.
“He says they’re fenced in by lemures. He must mean the akdraugi.” He looked to Mennenius. “The birds came from the south?” Mennenius nodded. Vitellius bit his lower lip, thinking. “He doesn’t mention the Fourth out of Gades. And that ‘N’—he must mean they’ve approached from the north. But managed to dispatch a message from the south . . . We might be able to send a message back. If they used an Air mage—the bird might know to find her master again.”