Lesson of the Fire

by Eric Zawadzki

  They are organized, though that isn’t exactly unexpected, he thought, as the First Wave stopped and started gathering itself, jabbers in the front ranks and stingers behind, and scores of the giant, shambling striped guer beginning to appear from the back. Bui had counted more than fifty of them in his scouting, and knew that if they made it across the river, the adepts would be in trouble.

  He turned to the adepts near him.

  “Ready bows, but don’t shoot until I say. The rest of you, stop gawkin’ and keep buildin’. We’ll use every minute we have to build walls and roofs. You twenty.”

  The team of adepts looked at him like mice staring into the eyes of a snake.

  “Spread out evenly alon’ the line an’ watch for anythin’ i’th’air. You see insero, let us know. They’ll have ravits, but we’ll have bows an’ roofs.”

  They remained frozen in place until he waved a hand at them, at which point they scampered off. The other adepts nearby caught the look on Bui’s face and resumed preparations. The relay team carried the order, using Mobility to hasten their movements.

  The First Wave finished its deployment. Bui counted eighteen places they would likely cross, jabbers first probably, then stingers, and he pointed to the five groups in the middle, which appeared to be the largest.

  “The leader’s there,” he said. No standard marked it, but every general would want to have the most protection. More than half of the visible striped guer were concentrated there.

  “If we kill their leader, they will run,” someone said, to general approval.

  “No,” Bui said. “They’d fall apar’, sure, but they’d still come. No one would order a retrea’, see, and we’d rather have that.”

  “So we should let it live?”

  Bui didn’t answer. Fighting against the Flasten army, the leaders had been predictable. They had stopped moving when the situation was confusing. The Drakes were more adaptable. But if they left the leader alive, and forced him to hesitate, it would be enough for Bui to order a retreat of his own.

  They waited tensely, watching the Mass, until a shout rose. The front ranks of the Mass had entered the water, running into it with howls and screams, splashing up so much water it looked as if the river was parting for them. Bui did a quick count. The First Wave was crossing from all of its positions, and all were within the range of the traps.

  He felt a sting of fear for his adepts, looking at him for instructions. Thousands of Drakes waded into the water in front of them. They should turn and run back to Domus now.

  He knew the adepts couldn’t win. This was the first battle of a war of attrition, and he was prepared for high casualties before the day was done. He did not intend to allow the Drakes to rout them, though. Tortz had been defended by a militia no more skilled with magic than these adepts, and Brand had organized them into a sturdy fighting force.

  As the howls of the Drakes grew louder, Bui raised his own voice to his adepts.

  “I need another team to come here. The rest of you teams, coun’ off by four. We’ll star’ with the middle an’ go east an’ west. Ones an’ threes’ll make a wall with Power to keep them in the river. Twos, you’ll watch the magic traps an’ use the gloves to fix them until they run out, an’ then attack with fire when the Drakes come out of the river. Everyone else, give them the gloves. Fours, you’ll save your magic to heal the woun’ed. Remem’er — arrows when I say.”

  They had trained a bit. Each adept knew his strength, in Power or in Vitality, trap-setting or glove-making. Bui hoped it was enough. So far, everyone listened. Numbered by those same strengths, they distributed as they were told.

  Bui waved to the team of adepts he had singled out.

  “Stay close to me. You’re my special escort force. You’ll do what I need you to do.”

  They shot him confused looks but followed him as he walked up and down the line, adjusting people’s positions and keeping an eye on the enemy.

  The Mass filled the river halfway now, some swimming and some trying to walk across the sticky mud bottom. Their gray, brown and black heads and bodies moved determinedly, the shouts fading, eager to start this fight. The Mass came with the confidence that for each who died, a hundred more would replace him, and Bui realized that the leader would not order a retreat at all.

  Somewhere down the adepts’ line, an arrow took flight, followed by a hundred more before Bui could react.

  “Don’t shoot! We’ll need those arrows later!” Bui screamed, but someone had already put a stop to it.

  A few arrows hit, however, but the premature attack only seemed to spur the jabbers forward. Enough jabbers were in the river now that the stingers began their march forward, and the river was more than three-quarters full of living bodies.

  Dinah’s shriveled teat, it’s like leading an army of mapmaker children across the Fens of Reur.

  A fountain of water flung a few jabber guer up into the air, and Bui was about to shout at his adepts again when a dozen more explosions appeared up and down the line — the Mass had reached the traps.

  Ten seconds later, the entire river seemed to be in the air, and jabber guer rained on the First Wave. Some hit the mud beach with thumps and cracks, setting off more explosions of mud and fire.

  Through the rain of river water, some of which was turning to steam, dozens and then hundreds of jabber guer broke through in great leaping bounds, hardly touching the ground. But the mud beach was so littered with traps that most of them set off something.

  “Fire! Fire at anything you can see!” Bui screamed as a particularly fast and lucky jabber took one final leap and landed among the stunned adepts. It was quickly dispatched as arrows filled the air, and someone was dragged away to be healed.

  Bui stared back at the river, rushing in on itself again. Most of the traps had been used. Jabber corpses floated downstream, and jabber bodies littered the mud beach. More than half their traps were gone now, and the stinger guer swam deliberately toward him.

  This will soon be the safest place to cross, Bui thought woefully, trying to see through the steam for the striped guer. A gust of wind cleared the air for a minute, and he suppressed a shout of shock.

  Across the river, the striped guer and two large bands of jabbers and stingers were moving upstream.

  He had no time to think. A score more jabber had leapt across the last line of traps and scrabbled at the wall to reach his adepts, and skirmishes were breaking out up and down his line. Gesturing to his special escort, Bui grabbed his spear to help in the nearest fight.

  The jabber had killed someone, and it launched itself at a fear-stricken adept as Bui cast his spear into its side, knocking it into the ground. The guerrilla was on it immediately, stabbing at the throat with a knife. He wrenched the knife and spear free and looked at the terrified adept.

  “You. Go down the line, and order everyone back one hundre’ yards. Go now!” he barked, and the adept fled. He pointed with the blooded spear at two of his escort. “Follow him and make sure he does it. An’ order a line of traps set atop the wall. Quickly, the stingers’re almost upon us.”

  “What about us?” someone asked.

  “You’re comin’ with me. The striped guer are headed upstream.”

  They jogged upstream behind the wall, ordering the adepts down and setting explosions along their mud wall. Bui killed two more jabbers and passed nearly a dozen guer corpses before the ground started shaking — the stingers had reached the traps on the mud beach.

  Their view north disappeared in mud and guer as the body of the stingers hit the traps. Bui risked a glance back down the line. As far as he could tell, the adepts were retreating. A few ran up and down the wall, randomly setting traps and pocketing the used gloves.

  Someone grabbed his shoulder, dragging him to a halt, and a stinger corpse landed a few feet in front of him with a crunch. It started to move, and one of his escort stabbed it with a spear.

  “Thanks,” he said, breathlessly.

  “You�
�re always tellin’ us to watch where we’re goin’,” the blood-and-mud-covered woman said. “You should do the same.”

  He grinned fiercely at her, and they passed the last of his adepts.

  Up here, more jabbers had made it past the traps, and with no one to fight, were milling around. Bui made note of this as, covered in his own explosions, he speared one and knifed a second. His escort, which had somehow grown to more than hundred, fell on the unsuspecting jabbers, and real battle ensued.

  Maybe their boss died crossing the river, and they had no idea what to do, he thought, stepping to one side to avoid a leap and hamstringing a guer attacking someone else. Maybe they had orders just to cross and then wait.

  Suddenly he was fighting a stinger guer, and brought his knife up to block the tail. They had made it past the traps, and he had no idea where they were.

  “Press forward!” he shouted. “We need to stop the striped guer!”

  Most of his small army disengaged and ran east, conserving their magic to heal themselves. Glancing around, Bui saw all of the jabber were down or too injured to run, and the stinger he had killed had been one of only a handful.

  More will come. He risked a glance toward the river.

  The mud beach was gone, the river permanently rerouted, shallower and slower. But the river was red, too, as far as the eye could see, and thousands upon thousands of the First Wave of the Mass drifted slowly toward the great delta of the Lapis Amnis. More littered the chewed and torn shallows where the beach had been, and more among the ruined wall behind him. A few Mar cloaks could be seen among them, and shouts from the west suggested more skirmishes had ensued.

  Someone near him shouted, and his head whipped forward. The striped guer had entered the river, a few hundred yards above the traps.

  How can we stop them? We have no traps; most of my army is downstream. Then he remembered the milling jabbers. They have orders. And he thought he knew what they were.

  “Stop,” he ordered, looking back down the line. The exhilarated adepts around him gathered in confusion.

  “We’re winning,” one said, and they all began to cheer.

  Bui nodded. “We’ve won,” he said. “But that pocket we just passed through? There’s one on the downstream flank. And this is their leader. We may have killed more than half of them, but that was because we had the traps. There are no more traps.”

  He gestured back the way they had come. “But we know they had orders, that they’re followin’ a plan. That gives us time. So we retreat, and let the rest of them by us, you understan’? We send a messenger to the weards at Domus and let them take care of this.”

  He looked north, across the river.

  “There’s another Wave we have to prepare for.”

  Chapter 36

  “Mardux Sven Takraf did not invent the wand. The Kaliheron taught their apprentices how to wield magic ‘by the staff’ (Ies). Nor did he pioneer mystalton (spell-shaping spells), which were an innovation of farl enchanters. But the Blosin gloves are his — marrying mystalton with Ies in a way that did not violate Bera’s Unwritten Law. The Blosin gloves allowed him to overcome the limitations of his tor and focus on mysdyn. With them, as long as he knew the pattern of an application, he could wield it simply by designing a series of wands that would build increasingly complex mystalton until he had a mystalt that could generate the pattern of the desired application. With the Blosin gloves, no spell — not even morutmanon — was beyond his ability.”

  — Weard Oda Kalidus,

  The Origin of Nothing

  Horsa was praying when they brought the cyan to him.

  “Weard Verifien,” the cyan said. “It’s Eda Stormgul. I know you remember me. The Mardux sent us to ...”

  “Eda?” It was like a dream. The reality of the battles he had fought, trying to outthink and outpace Ragnar, had made him forget the rest of Marrishland. “Oh Marrish,” he moaned, as though waking from a deep sleep suddenly.

  “Horsa,” Eda snapped. “I’ve come to warn you. The Mass is marching against Domus Palus. If the Drakes find it undefended, you will have no temple left to pray in.”

  The severity of her expression froze his blood.

  “You are serious.”

  She nodded.

  “How many Drakes? Thousands? Tens of thousands?”

  “At least a million,” Eda said, trying to look as certain as she could.

  Another chill gripped Horsa in spite of the summer heat. “The Mass ... Sven said it was myth,” Horsa whispered in fear. He glanced at the weards who had brought her to him, saw the looks on their faces range from disbelief to outright disgust. Did no one really believe?

  But Eda does, and she would never lie to me about something like this.

  “Call together my council,” he said, though he heard his own voice as if it came from very far away. “We need to discuss this immediately.”

  * * *

  “We are less than fifty miles east of the coast,” a lavender reported, “and at least part of Flasten’s force is twelve miles east of us.”

  “How close are we to Domus Palus?” Horsa asked.

  “Less than a hundred miles. We cannot be certain because every village looks the same out here, and the Mar in the area have long since fled.”

  “And the magic our recon spells noticed just to the north?”

  “I do not think it is Flasten. They would be headed north, not south.”

  “Unless they are as lost as we are.” He hated the bitterness in his voice, but he could not keep it out. His men were long used to his dour nature, though. They knew he wouldn’t lead them on a mapmaker’s folly.

  “We are not lost, Weard Verifien. We are not sure of exactly where we are. Most of the landmarks have been destroyed. Surely even Flasten would be able to guess the way to Domus Palus.”

  “If it is Flasten, they are in our way,” Horsa said.

  “We could break through their eastern arm and creep up along their flank,” the lavender suggested.

  “That will take too long, and Flasten will suspect your destination before you reach it. Domus Palus would face a double threat from Flasten and the Mass,” Eda said.

  The lavender sneered at the cyan’s speech. “We do not know that the force to the north is Flasten. Perhaps the Mardux is sending reinforcements.”

  “Send a dozen nonagons,” Horsa said. “I want eyeball recon this time. We need to be sure of who they are.” Cyan Eda might be, but I will listen to her as much as a lavender.

  “Yes, Weard Verifien.” The lavender would not even think of questioning his general.

  They were on the move within minutes. In addition to the nonagons, the Domus army had experimented with several formations. V formations for some assaults, jagged lines for others. This time, the detachment would travel in a tight circle used in pinpoint strike missions against vulnerable points — quick strike and, if necessary, an equally quick retreat even in the face of heavy losses.

  An hour later, they returned with dire news. Flasten’s army stood between them and Domus Palus. Horsa listened to the report with an impassive expression.

  “Weard Verifien?” one of the lavenders asked.

  He turned to them. “Pass the word to every nonagon you can find. And every pentagon. This war is no longer important. I need to find Flasten’s general. We will need his help.”

  Once their protests were defeated and they were gone, Horsa went to his tent. He sent everyone away, threw himself onto the ground and wept. He was not alone in his grief, for throughout the camp, the veterans of the Teleport War also wept for the victory they might have had.

  * * *

  A year in the mud, and Ragnar had lost his marsord. Somewhere in the muck and grime of their magical battles, Dinah was taking the weapon back to the minerals that had made it. The Domus army had lost almost a third of its number, and Ragnar had lost less than a tenth. He outnumbered them now — dramatically outnumbered them.

  But with the news he had re
ceived of his father’s death only a few hours ago, the red found he did not care.

  At least I have a marsord once more, he mused blackly, staring at the gilded blades in his hand.

  “Weard Groth, we have taken a prisoner.”

  Ragnar looked up. A yellow stood between two cyans.

  Ragnar walked forward.

  “I am Weard Horsa Verifien, general of the Domus army,” the yellow said. “I have come to negotiate surrender.”

  “Surrender?” Ragnar was astounded. After a year in this muck, surrender?

  “The Mass approaches from the north. We would side with you to defeat it.”

  Ragnar scowled. “If we accept your surrender, you will be prisoners and may not use magic. You will all become slaves according to Bera’s Unwritten Laws.”

  “This war among Mar must stop, otherwise Domus Palus will soon be no more. Our war already has destroyed a third of the Domus army and a tenth of yours.” Horsa took a deep breath. “We may be the last wizards remaining who can stop the Mass before it consumes Marrishland.”

  “What trickery is this?”

  “The Mass still lies beyond the range of your recon spells and mine, and I could easily falsify the result. You must trust me.”

  “Why?”

  “I am a priest, and by the Oathbinder and Marrish, my patron, I swear the threat is real.”

  “I accept your surrender. Assemble your army for my inspection. Then we shall consider our options. Do not even consider a mapmaker’s stratagem, or I really will take you all as slaves and sell you to the likes of Weard Wost.”

  Horsa bowed and wiped sweat from his brow.

  If I can save even one more Mar, I will surrender the rest of Marrishland.

  * * *

  Katla chafed at the timing. By now, the First Wave was across the Lapis Amnis, maybe halfway to Domus Palus. But because the Delegates would not see her directly if she just appeared, she had to come with the messenger. She had to take a periodic dose of morutsen, as well. Brack had done the same things, and now Katla respected his patience with Drake politics. It made Mar politics look blissfully simple.

  The Delegates normally met deep in the Drake territory north of the Fens of Reur, but with the Mass invading, they had moved their tent capital closer to their border with the fens. Despite having to ride the back of a striped guer with a handful of messengers and guards, Katla did not lose as much time as she thought she would have. They dismounted and walked when they reached the edge of the city.