The Gandsmen scattered, making for the hills across the sparsely wooded grasslands where the forest broke to the east. Like as not they would re-form and return to the battlefield in time. By then she would have long since executed her plan.
“Excellent to see you hale and whole, sir,” Lance-Captain Pourrain called down to her with a salute, one of his horsemen trotting up beside them holding Jiri’s reins.
“Let’s hope Vicomte-General Carailles is worth more than his usual tepid shit today,” she said, grinning as she swung up into the saddle. “Nice work on the approach there; using the sun’s glare was fine thinking.”
Pourrain bowed his head, acknowledging the praise.
She patted Jiri’s neck, her mount in good spirits to have her rider once more. On a lark, she channeled a quick binding of Life into Jiri, eliciting a soft whicker. Ah, but it felt good to be whole again.
“Let’s send another rider to the general,” she said. “There’s more bloody work to be done, but all of this is for naught if he isn’t in position by the time we arrive.”
“Very good, sir.” Pourrain gave another salute, riding to carry out her orders.
They were moving again, infantry in tight ranks at a double-time march behind the cavalry. It was no easy feat, maneuvering so many men and horses into the tree line, but she trusted her unit commanders. By now the main body of the enemy army would be pressing forward to harry the shattered lines of the Sarresant forces. Discipline or no, she’d never known men in the grip of battle lust to give up a chase easily. No matter that the Gandsmen’s right flank had faltered and they had no presence in the trees along the eastern line of battle. If the Gods willed it, a few advance scouts were all that stood between her and a covered approach to the Gand reserves. And, unless she missed her guess, the enemy’s command tents.
The preparations at Yves-sur-Raignon had been a disaster. Three days’ fortification and the enemy ignored them with a march along the eastern route toward the coast, exactly as she’d predicted. By the time the lords-general realized the enemy intended to avoid their little trap, the Gandsmen were halfway to Villecours. An admirable turning of the tides. For nigh on three seasons now, the Sarresant army had fought a defensive campaign despite operating in Gand territory, using just such tactics as the enemy now deployed against them. Maneuver in the open, refusing to commit to an engagement until you placed yourself in between the enemy and some important strategic objective. Then dig in and force them to attack over unfavorable ground. Simple, but effective. And now the enemy had cut them off from the port city of Villecours, second in importance only to New Sarresant itself here in the New World.
Unthinkable, to lose Villecours. But that was precisely what they faced with the enemy led by this new commander. Alrich of Haddingston, who could talk to the Gods. No time now to worry over the unknown. If her plan worked it wouldn’t matter whom or what the enemy commander could talk to.
The birds chirped a greeting as her men tracked through the woods, a column of horses and infantry four abreast. Their lines weaved through the foliage, staying tightly together, as she’d ordered. They would engage as soon as they arrived if Vicomte-General Carailles was in position when he received the signal. For all the general’s bluster in the command tent, he knew to trust her scouting reports and deployment “recommendations” during an engagement. She Gods-damned hoped he did anyway. They’d never crack the Gand reserves without a distraction.
“We’re in position, sir,” Lance-Captain d’Guile said with a salute as she approached the tree line.
“Very good, Captain. How are the battle lines disposed?”
D’Guile gave her a grim look, which she took as answer enough. She nudged Jiri forward and withdrew a spyglass from her saddlebag, surveying the plains where the main action had commenced earlier that morning.
Gods take them all. Had the Gandsmen kept half their army in reserve?
Ten thousand men if there were a hundred, arrayed in neatly divided lines beneath a row of low hills. Infantry, almost all, muskets sprouting from their shoulders like weeds in a flower bed. She’d guessed the disposition of the enemy line from studying the maps, and gotten their placement right, if not their numbers. Carailles’s men—the remainder of Sarresant’s 1st Division—were in place near the base of the hills, and hers were here, hidden in the trees. A swarm of red coats between them was a ripe apple tucked between their jaws, if swallowing it didn’t burst their bellies in the attempt.
She gave the order to raise the signal. Flags went up under the cover of trees, angled so the vicomte-general’s men could see, and the Gand army could not. And now they waited.
As she had “recommended,” Carailles’s soldiers had approached in the open, giving the enemy reserves plenty of time to deploy to meet them. All that remained was for Vicomte-General Carailles to order the charge, to pull as many as possible away from the center, where, sure enough, she could see the banners of their command tents. With the reserves committed to action, her men could sweep around, striking at the very heart of the enemy’s command.
Time stretched on, moments sliding toward minutes. What was he waiting for? She ordered the signal flown again, and it was. Go, you sack of pig shit. Attack!
Her heart sank.
He wasn’t going to give the order.
The lines wavered, a deadly game of waiting for the other side to cross the threshold where engagement was an inevitability. Any moment now, Carailles’s courage would wilt into an order to retreat, rather than attack. It was coming. She could see it, sense it, feel it coming like an oily sickness spreading over her skin.
She couldn’t let it happen. Her men were exposed; safe for now behind the cover of the tree line, but positioned like a wedge between the main lines and the enemy’s reserve. Without the distraction of Carailles’s attack to screen her movements, the enemy would have ample time to collapse, squeezing her brigades like a grape in a winepress. She had to act. She needed to do something to save her men, to save the battle and any hope of victory.
In the distance, she saw a glimmer of gold in the center of Carailles’s lines. A shining light like a beacon, beaming from where his soldiers sat in the open field. It was as if a leyline had overflowed onto the battlefield, leaking energy into her normal vision.
She’d never seen anything like it.
Guided by instinct, she slid her eyes shut, and it was there: an unfamiliar pattern of leyline energy, gold light pulsing like a beating heart, bright enough to overshadow the twisting grid of lines beneath the earth. She bound it, tethering herself to the source in one smooth motion.
Her eyes slid into another body.
“What should we do, Vicomte-General?” came a whining voice at her side. “Shall I give the order to fall back?”
“No.” She heard herself say it, but the voice coming from her throat was deep and baritone, a man’s voice. She squinted, the battlefield in front of her coming into focus. The same flags, the same lines of soldiers, but from another vantage, as if she had leapt across the field.
She said it again. “No.”
“Sir?” the aide asked, full of bewilderment. “Sir, your eyes—”
“We attack,” she said. “Attack! Order the charge! Do it now!”
As soon as she said it, the strange golden binding slipped away from her, and she felt her vision settle back into her own familiar form, resting atop Jiri’s saddle.
Her senses snapped into place together, an overload of sensation all at once. What had happened to her? The golden light …
“There! They’re attacking, sir!” Lance-Captain d’Guile pointed. Battle cries echoed across the plain as the two lines charged toward each other.
“That’s our signal.” Fog cleared from her mind at the sight. “Attack! Charge!”
Her soldiers flowed out of the forest, an arrow of men and horse pointed straight at the enemy command tents.
She tethered full-strength Body and Life bindings through herself and Jiri, h
olding a Death tether at the ready to slice through any defenses from the enemy line. The reins went slack in her hands, and she let Jiri fly. The rest of her cavalry surged in a storm of hooves, but Jiri danced on water, carrying her ahead of them in a furious dash. Let the men see her, let them take heart as their commander streaked ahead, her saber held aloft and glinting in the midmorning sun.
Across the plain they’d already been noticed. Companies of the enemy’s reserve were trying to split off from their skirmish with Carailles’s 1st Division, where the vicomte-general’s men tied them down. A pittance of defenders had been left around the command tents, and it was to them she turned her full attention.
Her saber streaked, flashes of cold steel empowered by Body striking down the frontline soldiers as Jiri crashed through them like a bolt of white lightning. Her Death binding sliced through a feeble attempt to block her path with Shelter, and she crashed into their camp. Jiri reacted with impossible agility, leaping tents, cookfires, and sentries alike as they struck deep, searching for Major General Alrich of Haddingston. A swarm of enemy soldiers trailed behind them, unsure whether to chase after her intrusion or turn to meet the horde bearing down upon their camp in her wake.
There. The command tent. Jiri saw it the moment she did, changing direction, racing with the full power of her long stride.
Heartbeats before they arrived, a man lifted the tent flap and looked out. A man in a general’s uniform, his eyes awash with golden light.
Jiri trampled the tent, but not before her saber took the enemy general across the face. Blood coated the end of her blade as she completed her follow-through, trailing droplets scattering to the wind. The enemy commander never even raised a weapon, made no defensive posture. Had he even been trained to combat?
Together, mount and rider thundered through the remainder of the camp, turning to survey the rest of the engagement.
Her men continued to swarm over the defenders in the tents, but the enemy soldiers had broken. There was a bond between men and their commander, unspoken but real, and she’d snapped it. The Gandsmen knew it, sure as sunrise, watching her forces swarm through the command tents. And knowing what he’d meant to them, how their fortunes had changed under his command, the Gand soldiers reacted with a mix of violent rage and despair. Both enemies of discipline. Even so, the Gandsmen had the advantage of numbers. This battle was not over yet.
Spurring Jiri back toward her lines, she called out the order to withdraw.
12
ARAK’JUR
Searching for Ka’Ana’Tyat
Sinari Land
He was fairly certain Ilek’Inari was lost.
Not that he doubted the apprentice’s gift; with Ka’Vos’s help, the shaman and the apprentice had divined the location of the meeting to which they now traveled. But Ilek’Inari had no head for woodcraft. They walked from tree to tree, glade to glade, until the sun rose high and shadows stretched across the forest floor. The Ranasi guardian and his charge would long since have arrived, and Arak’Doren would not be kind to Ilek’Inari when they finally did the same. Just as well. His own good humor had departed some time ago.
“Here, honored guardian, this mark, I have seen it!” Ilek’Inari gestured to a gash in the side of an oak tree, three broad cuts. A bear had hunted here.
“As you say.” He inclined his head out of respect, walking behind as they changed directions again. Ilek’Inari took long strides, shifting the packs he carried from shoulder to shoulder. Perhaps they were getting close at last.
Ka’Vos had declared the signs favorable—no great beasts near Sinari lands—and so Arak’Jur had been sent to accompany the apprentice on the final step of his journey. The Ranasi, their neighbors to the north, would also send a woman to complete the ritual. A fine omen, a chance to demonstrate to their neighbors that the Sinari still held the spirits’ favor.
“Yes, this is it!” Ilek’Inari exclaimed, calling back over his shoulder. “Two more hills and they will be there, where a stream is divided by a white rock.”
He grunted in reply.
They paced up a slope before descending into a narrow valley where, as promised, he heard the rush of running waters. A strange thing, the gift of the shamans. The guardians’ magic was simple, a blessing granted by the spirits of slain great beasts. To see far-off places or glimpses of what-might-be—these were things he did not understand, any more than he understood the secrets of the women’s magic, tied to the third kind of spirits, the spirits of sacred places and the land. Journeys to escort the shamans and the spirit-touched among the women were as close as guardians came to such mysteries.
He smiled, raising a hand in greeting. Oh, he had been right. Arak’Doren was not pleased.
“Brother,” he called to the figures beside the white rock at the center of the stream. “Honored sister.”
Arak’Doren scowled as he rose to his feet, gray-haired and leather-skinned, though he was strong and lean, with no sign of slowing from his age. Ilek’Inari earned a glare when the apprentice tried to make a similar greeting. The woman was not so sour, welcoming them both with a formal bow. He didn’t recognize her, though she was young, scarce older than Llanara, which made her young indeed to be making one of the women’s journeys. The subtleties of the women’s ways were beyond his understanding, but he’d accompanied enough of the neighboring tribeswomen to recognize her youth as exceptional. Arak’Doren spoke to introduce her: Corenna, daughter of Ka’Hinari, the Ranasi shaman.
She was garbed in the women’s ceremonial dress, white fur sewn around cured hides dyed white and bound in a tight wrap, with long skirts to match. Her face was painted white, save for a single blue line running from her hairline to her chin. Leather cords threaded with feathers completed the garb, binding her black hair back in a tight braid.
He and Arak’Doren left their charges to their ritual gifts and tokens, walking a few paces to make their own exchange.
“It is good to see you, brother,” he said. It took a fellow guardian to understand the life they led. It was not an affectation, to name him brother.
“It would have been good to see you yesterday,” Arak’Doren said, but they grasped forearms just the same. “So that’s the new Sinari shaman, then?”
“It is. Ilek’Inari is a good man.”
Arak’Doren grunted, eyeing their charges as Ilek’Inari and Corenna spoke their ritual parts to one another.
“Though,” Arak’Jur added, “he is not the best, when it comes to the wild.”
Arak’Doren laughed. “No, no he is not. Best hope Ka’Vos lives another generation, my friend. This one will have you warding in Hurusi territory when the juna’ren is hiding in your water stores.”
Arak’Jur smiled.
“Watch over Corenna,” Arak’Doren said. “She is precious to the Ranasi.”
“She has my full protection.” This was a sacred trust, between tribes. Ranasi women came to him for their journeys, and Sinari women came to Arak’Doren for theirs. Wars had started over guardians failing their charges. But a successful journey was a thing to celebrate for both tribes.
“These are clouded times,” Arak’Doren said. “It is good for the Sinari to gain another shaman.”
“Yes,” he agreed, cautiously. “Ka’Hinari’s visions have not changed?”
Arak’Doren shook his head. “They have not. We fear what they betoken. Death. Fire.”
“Perhaps this journey will mark an end to such things. The spirits have changed their paths before.”
“I hope it will be so, brother.”
Their charges had finished their ceremony. Seeing it, he embraced his counterpart once more.
“Safe journeys, guardian.”
“To you as well. Blessings, Arak’Jur.”
Once again, Ilek’Inari led the way through the trees. The bear they sought had left sign, back the way they’d come. Yet another omen of the spirits’ favor. His heart had warmed in reverence for the spirits when Corenna revealed Bear would
be the totem for their journey. Ilek’Inari’s had, too, he was sure, after being reminded they’d seen bear sign on the way to the meeting.
Corenna kept a good pace for all she wore the long skirts of the women’s ceremonial dress. She answered his questions about the Ranasi with deference, showing proper respect for another tribe’s guardian. It was not her first journey, nor even her first journey outside Ranasi lands; she had ventured into neighboring Olessi land, and had once spent two moons traveling to the lands of the Yanarat, in the icy reaches of the North. A curious woman. She was of an age with Llanara and had already made more journeys than any grandmother of the Sinari. Perhaps he should speak with Ka’Vos about urging the spirit-touched among their women to hone their talents. It was a time for such things, little as they would appreciate wisdom coming from the men.
Like himself, Corenna was unencumbered. It fell to the shaman’s apprentice to carry her provisions on the journey, as well as the implements for the apprentice’s own ritual. Ilek’Inari bore it in good spirits, with an infectious humor that passed the hours in easy conversation.
“Almost, you make me wish the guardians had pilgrimages of their own, honored sister,” Arak’Jur said.
Corenna favored him with a smile. “It is true, guardian. My father saw visions of a new sacred site on Yanarat lands, hidden across an icy channel. I thought Arak’Uro would let me go on alone, but he dove into the ice.”
He boomed a laugh. “Do not underestimate our pride.”
“The Yanarat shaman had no notion the sacred site existed?” Ilek’Inari asked over his shoulder.
“None. My father’s gift is powerful, but the spirits do not reveal everything to the shamans, especially where women’s secrets are concerned.” She smiled. “Yet even the Yanarat women had no knowledge of this place. We were the first to learn its secrets.”
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