by Tom Lloyd
Dawn emerged like a thief from the morning mist. The ghostly haze of their in-between existence surrounded Lynx as he paced the top rampart, trying to wake himself up. When he returned, Llaith was waiting, puffing away on a smoke and offering another to Lynx. He took it and together they sat in companionable silence, adding faint clouds to those that loomed all around.
‘As omens go, I ain’t in favour,’ Llaith opined at last, gesturing at the mist.
‘Huh?’
‘Don’t you feel it? Halfway between worlds, caught in a moment o’ quiet. We could be dead and not even know it.’
‘You always know how to cheer me up.’ Lynx sighed. ‘Pretty sure we’re not dead yet.’
‘Aye – but as an omen … well. We’re walking into the teeth of it tomorrow, most likely.’
‘Let the bloody Sons walk into the teeth. I’m planning on sauntering round behind the teeth when the, ah, teeth ain’t looking.’
Llaith laughed and clapped a hand on Lynx’s shoulder. ‘Ever the poet, my friend! Still, it sounds more our style, aye.’
After two hours the mist burned away to reveal little had changed. It was nearer mid-afternoon when the sentries gave a shout. The Cards clattered to the roof to see a long column of Sons of the Wind winding up the road towards them. An advance party led the way, helped in their ascent by the fact Toil had ordered several large white sheets to be stitched together and roughly painted with a playing card symbol.
‘You realise we could wipe ’em all out now,’ Anatin commented as the Cards watched the Sons’ army approach.
‘Our allies?’ Lynx asked.
‘Yeah. Tempting, ain’t it?’
Lynx thought for a moment. It was, oddly enough. The Sons were their allies, he knew that, but the lingering distrust over his interrogation by Kalozhin wasn’t even the reason why. Nor the massacre of their temporary Charneler allies. Unusual or not, the Sons of the Wind were still a Militant Order and he couldn’t trust anyone of that ilk.
‘Does feel like a bit of a waste,’ Lynx admitted at last. ‘All these big toys and no chance to play with them.’
Anatin nodded. ‘Whole armoury of mage-spheres downstairs too. How many chances do folk like us get to fling those around?’
Lynx smiled. ‘There’s the problem though, rare chances.’ He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the mountain behind them. ‘The one I want’s that way. If we have to put up with these bastards to get a shot back there, I’ll hold off.’
‘Never much liked being a grown-up,’ Anatin muttered, apparently agreeing with Lynx.
The scouts of their allies had had plenty of time to ransack the near-empty city for supplies long before the main army arrived. It took them a long while to reach the gates. Even Colonel Kalozhin and his advance party of one hundred were flagging after the ascent.
‘It is not true, what they say,’ Kalozhin declared as he passed through the gate with his troops. ‘The wicked looks well rested.’
The Sons colonel handed the reins of his horse to one of the Cards and flopped heavily onto a spare stool where Anatin and Toil reclined.
‘One small reward of bein’ so good at what we do,’ Anatin replied, raising a cup of wine. ‘Along with first crack at the wine cellar o’ course. We were all just wondering what had taken you all so long.’
‘We were to regroup before the city.’
‘Yeah, but that seemed dull and unnecessary.’
‘General Erazil was not impressed,’ Kalozhin pointed out. ‘You were to scout the defences, no?’
‘Don’t blame us for being enthusiastic,’ Toil said. ‘If you like we can let the garrison out again – for fairness’ sake. Give ’em a go at blowing up half your army?’
‘This will not be required. Victory seldom needs an explanation.’
‘Lucky for us,’ Anatin said drily.
‘Forgive me, but I am curious still.’
Toil sniffed. From the look on her face, she might have forgiven their breaking of the final seal, but she’d not forgotten it. ‘We all have our secrets, remember? Didn’t you learn it’s rude to ask that of a lady?’
‘Fortunately we don’t got any ladies in the company,’ Anatin said, giving Toil a sharp look. ‘An’ I ain’t interested in watching you two play games.’
‘Hey, you called me Lady Toil the first time we met,’ Toil protested. ‘Don’t tell me you were just in it for the money?’
Her joke failed to win Anatin over and he continued with a sour mutter. ‘Weren’t the worst of my choices back then neither.’
Toil inclined her head at that, unwilling to let him provoke an argument. ‘They’d gone by the time we reached here, just a small garrison left,’ she explained to Kalozhin. ‘Small enough that a little stealth and Sitain were enough to take the defences.’
The colonel stared at her in surprise. His rounded face was leaner after the long march, the lines making him look older than before. ‘Gone? Gone where?’
‘Gone to see to spiritual matters,’ she said, nodding towards the distant shape of Insar’s Seat at the far end of the valley.
‘All of them? The town garrisons too?’
‘Aye, recalled weeks back so our prisoners say. Made the civilians shit themselves so they abandoned the towns as soon as they had word of our coming.’
‘Spiritual matters?’ He hesitated. ‘We are too late?’
‘Reckon it’s the opposite actually. There’s no way to say what we’re facing, but there’s a few, ah, pointed theological questions running round these parts at night.’
The man nodded. ‘Our scouts have reported this – also more Knights-Charnel. Forces from west and south.’
‘Only to be expected,’ Toil said. ‘That’s why attacking this place is so stupid, eh?’
‘Yet here we are still,’ growled Anatin. ‘Penned in like cattle.’
Toil looked up at the walls where the smaller catapults stood, then at the crates of ammunition they’d brought up from the armouries.
‘More like foxes in the henhouse I reckon. Foxes who’ve got their hands on the bloody key to the henhouse too. Colonel, best get your army up here and billeted in the towers – give them a day’s rest before the last push. The kitchens are stocked, there’s beer and space for half your army to bed down. Best we don’t set camp or anything. Let’s give the Charnelers nothing unusual to see even at a distance, eh?’
‘A good night’s rest and we will be ready,’ Kalozhin confirmed.
‘Let’s hope so,’ Toil said. ‘You look out on your feet at the moment.’
‘Banesh sustains us in our trials,’ Kalozhin declared in grand fashion, but with a smile on his face. ‘Banesh shall give us strength. But if you have beer, Banesh would approve.’
Chapter 33
The following dawn found most of the Cards already awake. The day promised to be damp and cold but there was no grumbling as they made ready. From the ramparts, Lynx watched the sunrise as a work party of Sons of the Wind emerged. They had found a winch and set about using it to remove a pair of catapults from the roof of the gatehouse.
The bigger engines would need to be dismantled before they could be moved so they had been ignored. General Erazil knew they wouldn’t be able to wait long there. Two small catapults and four ballistae would have to be enough of an advantage. Teams of horses would drag the catapults on makeshift runners while the remaining supply wagons would serve as shooting platforms for the ballistae as well as haul mage-spheres.
‘Hard work for tired backs,’ Toil commented softly as she joined him. ‘They’re in an awful hurry, these fanatic friends of ours.’
‘The Sons?’ Lynx glanced over to her. ‘You worried about them?’
‘I’m worried about everything,’ she said with a tired smile. ‘If it wasn’t for you, I’d have barely slept in weeks.’
‘You have barely slept in weeks.’
‘True – thanks for nothing then.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve never needed much, it’ll serve. How about you?
Ready for this last push?’
‘Guess I’ll have to be. We got our orders yet?’
The hint of a smile appeared on her lips. ‘Ah – well now. The thing about orders is …’
‘You don’t like being given ’em,’ Lynx finished.
‘Only in the finest tradition of the Cards. Anyway – we’ve not technically been given any. Yet.’
‘You’ve got a plan?’
‘Of a sort. Our allies will have to march down this road in formation until the Charnelers spot ’em or they get in range of something. Precious little space up here.’
‘And us?’
Toil looked off to the eastern flank of the wedge-shaped valley. A tangled forest of pine and oak ran almost the entire length. At its widest it maybe spanned a mile – impossible ground for an army and hiding the gods alone knew what obstacles.
‘Oh sure, that looks fun,’ Lynx groaned. ‘Twice the effort and twice the danger.’
‘Sounds like our style,’ Toil said.
‘I’ve shared a bed with you often enough I can’t argue there.’
She gave him a thump on the arm but didn’t take her eyes off the forest. ‘If we go soon, we get a jump on events. Either catch the Charnelers unawares or bypass them entirely.’
‘Leaving the Sons to do the grunt work while we go for the prize?’
‘Exactly. Fuck ’em.’ Toil pointed down the valley. ‘That lake’s a problem though. Guards the flank of any army.’
‘What will the Charnelers think when they see us?’ Lynx said. ‘That this is an all-out attack? The charnel vaults are the prize, but not an easy one.’
Toil nodded. ‘It gives the Lord-Exalted a tricky problem. Do you defend the vaults at all costs and show your back to the main army? Or give the vaults up and make sure no one gets out alive?’
‘That’s the sensible call,’ Lynx agreed. ‘Doesn’t mean he’ll make it in the heat of the moment – or dogma will allow it.’
‘Let’s find out.’
Toil went to find Anatin and secure his approval, then the pair of them quietly sought out the remaining Cards. With food and ammunition already packed, it took mere minutes before the company filed down to ground level, watched by a few puzzled Sons sentries. With no orders to the contrary, their allies simply watched the Cards walk the few hundred yards to the treeline and disappear. Lynx knew they would assume orders had been given. By the time anyone found out, the Cards would be long gone. Whether Toil intended to screw the Sons over entirely, he wasn’t so sure, but right then it didn’t matter. They knew who the enemy was and they had a job. That was enough.
The air was different in the forest. Lynx felt it almost as soon as they entered. The cold clean breeze and empty sky was replaced with the thick dampness of undergrowth and the nearer hush of woodland. The tramp of mercenary boots through the vegetation could only dampen that sense of sudden difference. Looking around he realised he wasn’t the only one. The days of in-between worlds were over, overlooked by looming mountains and the vast slab of sky. Now they were back in a place they recognised – close, chaotic and full of unseen danger.
‘Toil,’ he whispered after they had gone a few hundred yards. ‘Is this safe?’
She gave him a look.
‘Yeah, I know, but this forest.’ He pointed around at the strange twilight beneath the trees. It was still early and the daylight barely permeated the tree canopy. ‘Things that like the dark, would this be enough for them?’
‘Honestly?’
‘Yeah.’
She grinned. ‘No fucking idea. Why do you think I’m not in the lead?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Aye, true.’ She paused. ‘Maspids will hunt the surface at night, we’ve seen that. Armed soldiers might drive them off, push them from their tunnel mouths. I don’t think they’re much for digging.’
‘So there could be some out here?’
‘It’s not what I’m losing sleep over, I’ll tell you that much. This is still too bright for most beasts o’ the deepest black. Even whipped up into a frenzy I don’t think they’re venturing into the open at any time. More likely they’ll throw themselves on whoever is blocking their path underground. Most of what you find down there isn’t so clever, brains of a beetle.’
‘And golantha?’
She pursed her lips. ‘Who the shit knows? Even if we come up against one that looks familiar, I’m taking no bets.’ Toil patted the cartridge case at her side. ‘Taking no chances either. In the meantime … Safir, if you want to say a prayer, now might be the time.’
‘I’ve said all I need to,’ the Knight of Snow replied. ‘Wasted enough breath on those broken scraps of half-remembered dreams. I reckon the time for words is over. Now we make good on them with our actions.’
Toil exchanged a look with Lynx. ‘Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘Bollocks to the lot of ’em, then.’
‘Bollocks to the lot of ’em,’ Safir confirmed.
The rest of the company took up the call, her words echoed back in stuttering fashion around the trees. After that, the Cards lapsed into silence again. The dense terrain required enough concentration and Lynx knew it was a long, heavy journey they had ahead of them.
The sloped ground was damp and treacherous underfoot, the pungent scent of fallen needles filling the air. Occasional faint snatches of birdsong broke the quiet, but largely the forest was silent. Lynx tried to picture the valley in his mind. The ground dropped away steadily from the pass, but nothing like as steep or as far as the approach to it. The greater part of the valley was almost entirely level, bar the huge ancient debris that studded the ground.
Eight miles of open country provided farmland and pasture to feed the city, small farms dotted around the landscape. For their purposes it was a fair expanse for the noble art of warfare – manoeuvres, feints, charges, trusting to the bravery and training of troops. Lynx was bloody glad he was out of it. Far better to creep through some forest ready to stab them in the back, even if it meant admitting he really was one of the Cards now.
With Kas and Brel leading, the pair of them popping in and out of view, the rest just had to trudge along behind. The going was hard, mud and undergrowth dragging at their legs, and every few yards they had to go around or over some sort of obstacle. The majority of the trees were hardy evergreens with paddle-shaped sprays of needles. They weren’t tall, but most rose large enough for the Cards to duck under their branches and carry on.
The Cards followed a winding rabbit path, avoiding sections of the forest where trees had fallen and allowed a dense tangle of plants to spring up. Lynx didn’t look too carefully but amid the rusty skeletons of bracken and bramble thickets he glimpsed what might even have been tanglethorn.
Hours passed and Lynx lost track of the morning as he walked, fatigue filling his limbs. When a soft shower of rain started to fall there was a faint moan of dismay from the troops, but Anatin took it as a sign to let the company rest. They watched the rain fall from beneath a number of wide-spreading trees, the Cards tense and silent amid the deserted forest. Once, a pair of squirrels raced down from a tree and almost got obliterated by the twitchier members, but mostly the wildlife steered clear. In the distance, Lynx saw a few small deer, no higher than his knee, spring away as they approached.
The Cards stopped again and ate a hasty lunch while Toil and Anatin discussed their location with the scouts. Brel had already cut away towards the edge of the forest to get sight of the Sons of the Wind. They didn’t want to outstrip their allies too far, but at the same time autumn days in the north were not long.
‘We might be out here all night,’ Toil declared. The idea didn’t look popular.
‘If there are maspids out here we’ll not see them coming,’ Kas countered.
‘They won’t be here.’
‘You sure?’
Toil nodded. ‘It’s not ground they like; soft underfoot, tangled, full of vegetation and scents. We’re probably safer than any pickets the Sons will pos
t.’
‘Find somewhere we can defend,’ Anatin told Kas. ‘Any advantage we can get. The Marked Cards will be on watch, the rest of us won’t be able to see shit come nightfall.’
Brel caught them up an hour later with news of the Sons. They were keeping pace with the Cards, he reported, and had sent advance forces ranging forward to occupy manors and villages. The bulk of the army marched on the road with the war machines they’d appropriated, but Brel couldn’t see any sign of the Knights-Charnel defenders.
Encouraged, they pressed on, warily skirting a deep hollow in case it led underground. Beyond that the ground rose again as a scattering of boulders broke up the terrain. The trees thinned out to reveal the remains of ancient human works – not a settlement, Toil guessed, but some sort of burial complex.
This was nothing like the necropolises of the eastern states that Lynx had read about. Instead, centuries-old stone and earth barrows protruded from the earth like the backs of whales half-risen from the ocean. Spurs of stone jutted into the air at either end of most while the largest had a ring of them. Each block was ten feet in length and set at such an angle that Lynx could fit neatly beneath the point.
Toil called a halt to check each one, her eyes alight with professional delight. She pronounced them safe, whatever that meant, but urged Kas to move on. She received no argument and they spent one of the few hours remaining before dusk putting some distance between them and the barrows.
After a wearying day of slow travel Kas found somewhere defensible a short time before sunset. A snug hollow was crowned by one large oak that rose above the spreading raven-wings of smaller pine trees. A fallen tree was hauled over to the mouth to provide some sort of defensive line, denuded of half its limbs thanks to Reft’s hatchets. They couldn’t risk smoke from a fire, more for the smell than the sight of it. The Cards settled down to a long cold night, tucked in tight with their comrades. Darkness came swiftly afterwards, quiet as a swooping owl.