And when we take Sejeend, Bardow thought sombrely, the enemy won't have a choice at all.
* * *
The assault on Sejeend's lakeward defences began as planned. Rul Yarram arranged his cavalry in two wings with Bardow, Guldamar and Terzis in the front rank of the left. From there they would unleash a volley of Lesser Power spells and bring down part of the main wall and hopefully one of the three towers which guarded the approaches. Yarram's knights would then pour through the gap and take the defenders unprepared.
Battle standards were produced from saddlebags, snarling creatures of war on pale blue backgrounds. Banners flying, the knights cantered in formation from behind a long spur of forest and into full view of the ramparts of Sejeend. With exacting grace both wings wheeled to face the enemy and broke into a steady gallop. By now the rain had lifted and occasional shafts of sunshine lanced through the clouds, flashing on wet armour and unsheathed blades.
Bardow rode in the front rank flanked by Guldamar and Terzis, a slight intense woman who seldom smiled. Each had begun the thought-canto of Cadence several minutes before, and Bardow could feel an aura of Lesser Power gathering about them as the walls grew nearer.
He glanced sideways past Terzis at the straight, glittering ranks of galloping riders and thought, Soon, very soon...
And looked back to scores upon scores of enemy troops streaming out of a couple of open gates and racing pell-mell towards the oncoming cavalry.
"What insanity is this?" Guldamar shouted above the din of the charge.
Bardow did not answer, fixing his gaze upon the approaching mob. Every one seemed to be a seven-foot tall Mogaun savage roaring though a bristling beard and brandishing a club or a spear or a poleaxe. At first glance it was an unnerving sight but there was nothing coordinated about it. Guldamar is right, he thought. This is madness. So what am I missing?
He frowned, trying to block out all other sensation as he began a second thought-canto in his mind. Knifeye, seeing through to the truth...
The strain of maintaining both spells was like a burning burden in his head, but he maintained. Off to the right, Yarram was gesturing the front ranks to level their spears as Bardow saw an onrushing knot of brutish warriors turn into terrified, rag-clad townsfolk. In horror, he wrenched his horse rightwards, trying to slow the impetus of those behind, trying to reach Yarram's wing of riders.
"Stop!" he cried. "It's an illusion - don't attack!..."
But it was too late. There was a mingled crash of screams as spears and swords struck down the blindly rushing, spell-disguised people. In a matter of seconds the open ground was a scene of slaughter. The carefully planned charge dissolved into confusion as some of Yarram's men dismounted and went to the aid of maimed and slain innocents. Bardow saw one young knight weeping over a dying woman he had speared only moments before, and another struggling to staunch a deep wound in the neck of an old man.
A hand grasped his shoulder roughly and he turned to see a dishevelled, blood-spattered Yarram.
"How could this happen, wizard?" he snarled. "Tell me, by the Mother!"
Bardow glared at him out of a hard knot of cold rage. "A Mogaun shaman is behind this abomination," he said. "Get your men back on their horses, commander. We have vengeance to exact."
Yarram met his iron gaze for a moment, then gave a sharp nod and rode off to goad his knights into action. Bardow sought out Guldamar and Terzis, and saw them tending to the wounded. His call to them was wordless, imperative, and they were back astride their horses and riding to meet him in moments.
Terzis was pale and trembling, her eyes red from tears, hands holding the reins in a white-knuckled grip. She seemed unable to speak, unlike Guldamar.
"I have never...never seen such a barbarous..." The young man struggled for words. "And I know where he is - "
"The middle tower," Bardow said. "He is watching us right now. I can feel his joy."
As one they turned to face the town, the walls, the middle of the three squat towers. Savage chants and jeers were faintly audible over the cries and moans of the wounded. Bardow strove with his senses, shutting it all out, then with head bowed he focussed on the thought-canto of Cadence, making its elements and gyring form the axis of his intent.
Like a song of his blood and bone, like a fire fuelled by heart and mind, it grew up from somewhere in his chest, up into his throat. He was vaguely aware of his companions enacting the same ritual as the spell burgeoned till he knew he could restrain it no longer. And all his anger erupted in a wordless roar out of which the Cadence sound was born. An instant later came Guldamar's, then Terzis'. The air itself distorted, grass tore and pebbles leaped with the passing of that three-fold shriek of power.
Invisible, it flew across the open ground. There was a moment of anticipation. Then it struck the tower. For a long instant the building held, powdered mortar puffing from between cracks, a few roof slates sent spinning. Then, like a child's toy of wooden blocks, it gave way, teetered and collapsed, clouds of dust billowing around crashing tons of timber and stone. A large piece of the tower toppled sideways onto a stretch of the ramparts, crushing dozens of the defending mercenaries and demolishing the wall. On the other side, a section of wall fell backwards into the town, tearing open a pair of heavy wooden gates. Yarram saw the opportunity and led his knights in a mad charge towards the unguarded gap.
But Bardow was already at the gates, urging his horse over the splintered wreckage, swinging his stave at the few remaining, dazed mercenaries. With a harsh clattering of hooves he rode into the cobbled town street and stared about him with a piercing gaze. When the tower had first begun to totter, he had seen a scrawny figure leap from one of its lower windows and now that the Cadence canto was spent he knew from suddenly heightened senses that the Mogaun shaman was alive and heading towards the south of the town. Bardow followed, head full of the sight of dying innocents, heart full of vengeance.
The roads sloped up in the direction of the pale stone mass of Hojamar Keep and the low saddle-ridge it had been built to guard many centuries ago. As he rode the din of Yarram's battle receded only to be replaced by other sounds of confusion. Gangs of townsfolk roamed the streets looking for Mogaun sympathisers or any mercenaries foolish enough to stray out alone. Smoke was rising from a dozen places across the town and from the battlements up on the ridge came the faint noise of fighting.
But Bardow was engaged in the hunt, tracing the hate-taste of the shaman through the streets of Sejeend. The bounds of his mind stretched as he shaped three thought-cantos, three separate and distinct braidings of smell, texture, form and sound, symbols both explicable and cryptic which were his personal links to the Lesser Power. The strain of it grew with each step, and although he could feel it starting to eat into his strength he was heedless, driven.
Few approached him as he rode through the smoky, twisting streets, and those who did he struck insensible with the thought-canto Lull. Before long he came to an imposing townhouse whose tall, narrow windows had been tightly shuttered and whose tall doors of carved agathon were guarded by four sentinels. Using Lull he disposed of them from horseback then dismounted, hitched his horse to a wall stanchion and climbed the steps to the doors.
Inside was a long dim hallway hung with heavy tapestries, their details scarcely revealed by a couple of weak, flickering tallow lamps. There were a few doors leading off yet Bardow made for the main staircase at the far end. He knew there were prisoners behind those doors, their fear and despair seeping out into the hall like a thin odour of agony. But they would have to wait until he had dealt with their tormentors.
He climbed through four floors of darkness broken only by grey slivers of daylight from a poorly-fitting window shutter, and the occasional lamp or guttering torch. All sounds were muted, the murmurs of prisoners, or their weeping, the creak of steps underfoot, faint shouts from outside, but no guards patrolling. Bardow could feel the malicious expectancy of his waiting enemy, and the towering arrogance.
; Overconfident, he thought. Good.
At the top floor his senses drew him to a short passage and five steps leading up to a door whose tree-and-bell carvings had been defaced with an axe. He paused and looked down at the stave he had brought with him - it was a two foot-long piece of agathon wood, its ends heeled with bands of rediron, its length incised with symbols and intricate patterns. Although it was not sorcerous, and held no power of its own, it was well made and satisfyingly heavy in the hand. He nodded to himself - it would have to do.
Then, with forced calmness, he stepped up to the door and pushed it open.
The hate was palpable as he entered the darkened room, a hate as thick as smoke, engulfing, tainting. Light bloomed from rushlights placed at either end of a long trestle upon which a hooded figure sat cross-legged. Glinting eyes regarded him amid a deathly silence. There was a sharp unsettling odour in the air and his undersense told him of the complex symbols drawn in blood upon the floor.
"Ohosstu jun gyor sashdno maroi, yaspe?".... Have you come to burn me with your flames, o mighty candle?"
Bardow's reply to this mocking barb was the thought-canto Lull, hurling its pent-up power straight at the Mogaun. A blue-white nimbus flickered around the seated shaman who grinned and uttered a low chuckle as the aura began to falter. Undaunted, Bardow released his second spell, the thought-canto Seethe, which he directed at the shaman's clothing and at the trestle beneath him.
Boiling steam erupted from the Mogaun's furs and likewise from the trestle's wooden planks. He shrieked in sudden pain and tore off his upper garments while scrambling bare-footed down onto the floor. Enraged, he flung out his arms towards Bardow, bony fingers hooked in claws, and spoke a string of barbaric words interspersed with clicks and other sounds.
Symbols appeared on the floor, glowing a hot, corrosive green. Simultaneously, the rushlights' weak radiance brightened and thickened, an eldritch sight in the steam-veiled room. Suddenly, the dense knots of light fountained towards the ceiling then swooped down at Bardow in the shape of huge fiery hands.
He reeled on his feet as they struck and enfolded him in an abominable grasp. Yet he stayed upright, eyes fixed on the wildly gesticulating shaman, and on his scrawny neck. The huge conjured hands were tightening their grip on his neck and chest, twisting, crushing. But he shut out the torment and instead used his third and final thought-canto, Trueflight, to enbind the stave he held in his free hand. With the last of his strength he drew back and hurled it at his foe.
All movement seemed to slow to a crawl. The Mogaun saw what Bardow had done and began to turn away but the enchanted stave altered the curvature of its flight accordingly. The panicking Mogaun held up a hand to fend off the attack, and the stave punched straight through it and the underside of the shaman's chin and lanced up into his brain.
Bardow fell to his knees, all vigour spent, even as his enemy staggered back against the wall, bloody mouth making ghastly wet sounds. But the eyes remained fixed on Bardow who sprawled over on his side. From within the dreadful twin grasp of malign sorcery Bardow stared at floor level across at the shaman, now slumped against the wall, with his head tilted to one side and blood darkening his neck, and refusing to die. The eyes burned with hate, the lips silently mouthed and snarled, and to Bardow it seemed as if the Mogaun was feeding on his own agony.
And he despaired, knowing that all his strength and skill had not been enough, knowing that his death was upon him. As his sight began to fail, he wished he had hoped less...
Running footsteps clattered somewhere in the house, doors banged, voices spoke and wept. The footsteps came nearer and he was vaguely aware of newcomers in the room. Someone spoke his name, then uttered a curse. There was the hiss of a drawn blade followed by the sound of a sword striking flesh. And again. Suddenly the crushing pressure was gone and a blurry realness crept back into his vision. Someone had opened the shutters and natural light filled the room. He could just make out a figure standing over the shaman's still form, one hand lifting up something by long strands...the head, he realised.
Someone else crouched close by and stared worriedly at him.
"Archmage - do you hear me? The Mogaun scum is dead. Do you understand?"
The man was broad-shouldered, with cuts and bruises on his unlovely face and a fresh gash on one side of his smooth, hairless scalp. Recognition cut through the exhaustion.
"The Mother must surely have a sense of humour," Bardow said hoarsely, "to make you my rescuer, ser Korren."
Dow Korren, chief negotiator for the Northern Cabal, gave an ironic smile. "I and my associates were waylaid during our return journey, Archmage, which we did not find the least bit amusing. Still, it is good to find you well."
"I'm a breathing ruin, as you can clearly see. Help me up, if you will." As Dow Korren lifted him into a seated position, he went on. "I'm a cup drained to the dregs, a log charred near the core, a river baked to the merest trickle..." He paused, suddenly aware of how he must sound. He sighed, rubbed at his eyes with trembling then focussed on the other man in the room and was pleased to see who it was. "Leave that cursed thing be, Guldamar, and come over and speak to me of the fight."
The young mage had placed the shaman's severed head on the trestle and was squatting before it, frowning as he contemplated the grisly object.
"The last I saw of the fighting was Yarram leading some of his men in pursuit of a few Mogaun still on horseback and trying to escape. Terzis was helping a few of Yarram's captains to protect a captured Mogaun chieftain from a mob bent on revenge." With the point of the sword he still held, he scraped at the black, flaking symbols on the floor. Then raised it to indicate the blood-spattered head. "Something is amiss here."
"Explain," Bardow said, suddenly uneasy.
Guldamar shook his head. "Some kind of presence yet remains in the room, and the head is part of it. I think."
"Then we chop it up and feed the pieces to the greenwings," Dow Korren growled, pulling a long dagger from his waist.
"No, wait," Bardow said, forcing himself shakily to his feet. He staggered with the effort but Korren lent a supporting arm. "There is only one certain way of purging whatever lingers in this place - fire."
"We burn the body?" said Korren.
"This room," Bardow said. "The entire house."
"We would have to get everyone out," Korren said.
Guldamar got to his feet and resheathed his blade. "Then we should begin."
Bardow nodded, glanced around the room then paused in wonder at what he saw through the open shutters.
The window faced south and from this height offered a view across clustered roofs to the Keep and the battlements along the nearby cliff edge. There was fighting up there, knots of men struggling and charging, with the thick of it taking place on a wide stone bridge which joined the battlements to the keep. Heaving throngs of warriors from both sides were locked in deadly combat, and at its centre flew a banner, a great blue flag bearing the image of the Fathertree. Instinctively, Bardow knew that Tauric was near that banner and he felt a surge of conflicting emotions, a deep-seated joy at the proud flaunting of their long-oppressed emblem, and a biting anxiety over the boy's safety.
"Our comrades need our help," Guldamar said urgently. "Come, we shall clear out this foul place and put it to the torch."
"I would gladly aid you," Dow Korren said. "But my colleagues were imprisoned in the lower town - I must discover their whereabouts and release those who yet live."
With a hand still resting on Dow Korren's shoulder Bardow turned from the window. "You shall have help in your search - I shall see to it." He grimaced at the acrid odour of the room. "For now, let us begone from here."
* * *
To Tauric it seemed that he was clamped in a vice of bodies. Gathered all around him in a tight phalanx were the men who called themselves the White Companions, a dozen or so young men Kodel had selected from the hundreds who volunteered before they left Oumetra. On Tauric's left was tall Aygil, the muscles o
f his arms bulging as he strove to hold the great banner aloft, while on his right, ever-vigilant, was Kodel's nameless deputy, the Armourer.
It was frustrating. From the moment he and the others had climbed the scaling ladders up onto the cliff battlements, he had been surrounded and protected and never given the chance to swing his sword in anger. And now the Hunters Children, who in their scores surrounded the White Companions, were driving forward along the bridge, forcing the mercenaries back towards the Keep. Men were fighting and dying for him, Tauric knew, and he felt a helpless fury as he saw one of the Hunters Children take a spear thrust in the shoulder which sent him toppling over the bridge's low parapet.
A hand gripped his shoulder and the Armourer spoke above the battle's din.
"You are already in enough danger," he said. "And still you accomplish much. See how they fight for you."
Tauric nodded yet could not shake off the sense of frustration. He remembered something that Kodel had said to him in Oumetra just days ago - An emperor cannot be a mere symbol. To his subjects he is more than a mortal man wearing a crown, so he has a duty to do and to be more.
He was about to say as much to the Armourer when a shout went up from the enemy troops. One of their number had clambered onto the shoulders of the second rank only yards away, and with a dagger in either hand he launched himself over the heads of attackers and defenders alike, straight towards Tauric.
Closed in on all sides, Tauric struggled to draw his sword. But the Armourer was swifter by far and with a savage accuracy brought his own blade round in a silver blur for the mercenary to impale himself as he came down. The dying man crashed into Tauric who reeled backwards, involuntarily grabbing Aygil the standard bearer and dragging him down too.
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