Rykeifer whistled. “So, you’re a real greenhorn, eh? Well, at least you’ve bloodied your sword a little bit, so you should be okay. But keep an eye open. You’re going to be leading your own men into battle, one day, so you should see what it’s like when two sizable forces meet up. The sights, sounds, and smells are not exactly pleasant. And the larger the armies that meet, the worse it gets.”
Maelgyn grimaced. “Trust me, I am not taking this encounter lightly.”
“Your regent, Duke Valfarn, is an experienced veteran, widely regarded for his tactical prowess,” Rykeifer noted. “You’ll probably want him to plan your battles for you, at least until you’ve got enough experience to know what you’re really doing.”
“Yes, I had already decided that,” Maelgyn noted, watching as the approaching cavalry neared what was the first of the traps he’d helped set up. “I plan on gathering together a good advisory council that I will actually listen to, unlike some of my cousins, and I plan on having him on it. I’ve got a couple other people, in mind, as well.” Maelgyn waved his hand dramatically, summoning his magic and setting that trap off.
A number of shallow pits, kept closed by a few easily removed iron clasps, opened up suddenly under the weight of dozens of horses. With a crash, both beast and rider fell into the spiked trench underneath, killing roughly a quarter of the oncoming enemy in one quick move. Thankfully, most of the trenches had been dug over the past several years during militia drills, but filling them with spikes took much of their preparation time. Hopefully, that would be enough when combined with the other things they had planned.
“Now!” Rykeifer called, and at his command the fifty archers (who were usually hunters by trade, and therefore ideal to form the largest and most effective portion of a militia) let loose a volley at the enemy. Unlike the hail of arrows launched as rapidly as possible by professional armies trained in large-scale combat, these militia men instead had been told to do what they did best: Shoot accurately, not quickly. They were using Dwarven-made swallowtail arrowheads – designed not to pierce armor, but instead to kill cavalry horses – and their effect was devastating.
Maelgyn knew the raiders had reached Euleilla’s range when he saw weapons, armor, the occasional saddle buckles, and more fly up off the approaching charge. It looked as if this wasn’t as effective as it had been against the separatist bandits, as one might expect at that range, but it still was immensely useful. The Sho’Curlas soldiers may have been prepared for magic wielding opponents, carrying secondary weapons made of bronze and other metals impervious to magic, so they were far from disarmed, but the spears she made of their old weapons were quite deadly when the oncoming army rode straight into them.
In a matter of moments, the raiding party was in complete disarray. Expecting to find a sleepy village putting forth some token resistance at best, they instead found themselves riding straight into a trap. Had Maelgyn and Euleilla not been there, the raiding party would have had some trouble, perhaps, but they would most likely have managed to raze the town.
A single arrow went flying in response to the Elm Knoll Militia’s strike, but Maelgyn knocked it aside before it reached its target. They may have had bronze weaponry and, from the look of things, a few lodestones, but they weren’t truly equipped to handle the devastating effect a powerful mage could have on an army. An average mage likely would have had trouble with this many opponents, but neither Maelgyn nor Euleilla were average mages.
The surviving cavalry, now heavily outnumbered and – thanks to the presence of the two mages – badly outmatched, wheeled around and began a retreat.
The militia almost followed them, but Rykeifer’s call stopped their advance.
“Let them run,” he called out. “We have better things to do.”
Maelgyn frowned. “They could come back, you know. If you strike them down now, they won’t have time to regroup.”
Rykeifer shook his head. “We can’t catch them, and even if we could we’d have a severe disadvantage. Here, in the village, the militia will fight well. This is their home, and their families and livelihoods depend on their ability to stop the enemy. Out there, however, the greater experience and training of the enemy will show itself, and we’d be slaughtered.”
“Still, it is a great victory,” Euleilla said as she approached them. It seemed that, as the battle had ended, she came back down from the library tower before being told to, but neither man would complain at this point. “They were devastated, while we haven’t taken a single casualty.”
Rykeifer nodded. “Don’t expect most battles to be like this, young Maelgyn,” he cautioned. “Even in great victories, there are typically an equally great number of casualties on both sides. And then there is tending to the surviving enemies. Come, we need to go see if there are any wounded, and I believe only you and I can speak Tel’Curlan.”
Few people who didn’t have trade or negotiate directly with those local to Sho’Curlas bothered to learn their native language of Tel’Curlan, but being a Sword Prince it was expected of Maelgyn. Most Human nations relied upon a language known as “Porosian,” after the ancient empire which first spoke it, but the only people of Sho’Curlas who learned this common tongue were the merchants and innkeepers.
“I speak it,” Euleilla said.
“Oh?” Rykeifer exclaimed. “How do you know Tel’Curlan?”
“Her adoptive father was a veteran soldier,” Maelgyn noted, knowing she wouldn’t answer on her own. “And I believe her magic may be able to find the living among the dead better than either of our eyes.”
“I’ve never heard of a mage with such an ability,” Rykeifer said, glancing at her in amazement before turning his attention back to Maelgyn. “What about you? Can you do it?”
“No,” Euleilla answered for him.
“Why not?”
“Let’s just say Euleilla has some special talents and leave it at that,” Maelgyn explained. He didn’t want too many questions which might reveal her secrets. “You performed brilliantly. That was one of the best organized militias I’ve ever seen. I would like you to consider joining my advisory council once I’ve taken power in Sopan.” It was an honest request, as Maelgyn had been impressed by the man, but he might not have considered it if he hadn’t been trying to think of a distraction.
Rykeifer sighed, looking around. “I don’t feel like leaving my militia – especially not after a battle like this. I’ll think about it, though.”
Maelgyn nodded. “If you decide to take the job, head east. Euleilla’s adoptive father runs the ‘Left Foot Inn,’ in... what was the name of your village again, Euleilla?”
“Rocky Run.”
“Right. I’ll be stopping back by there, soon, if all goes well,” Maelgyn noted.
“Of course. You should tell her family you married her.”
“Um... right. I’ll get to that eventually.” Maelgyn hadn’t considered the fact that he’d have to tell Ruznak, at some point, that he’d married the old sailor’s favorite ‘daughter.’ Or tell him that he’d dissolved said marriage, if it came to that. He swallowed nervously and decided to change the subject yet again. “Well, let’s get moving. Those wounded aren’t likely to get better if we stay here gabbing all day.”
It was the first time Maelgyn had ever really walked through a battlefield after the action. Even after the bloody fight with the separatists, he’d been unconscious as the Dwarves went ahead and buried or burned all the dead.
Bloody wounds and broken bones, Maelgyn had seen aplenty in his travels – he’d even caused a few. However, the sights and sounds of the battlefield were much more intense: Bits of bone and cartilage, the smell of feces and vomit and urine and guts, the sounds of his own feet stepping through the viscera that once was living flesh as he tried to hear the moans of the wounded.
He felt ill, knowing he’d had a part in all this chaos, but he didn’t regret his actions. These dead were intending to do the same to the people of this village. That knowled
ge, combined with the memory of what their masters had done to his uncle King Gilbereth, tempered the ugliness of the scene somewhat in his mind. Still, he doubted he would be able to eat comfortably for a week.
It was hard to tell living from dead. As he had guessed, however, Euleilla proved invaluable in that matter. Most of the wounded had been trampled or fallen on by their own horses, suffering severely broken bones and internal injuries. A few needed immediate medical attention, but the worst cases could only be comforted on their way to death.
Maelgyn’s own efforts were very limited. Unlike Euleilla, he could not sense the inherent magic in people, and so was unable to tell the living from the dead without checking to see if someone was breathing. This, of course, meant he needed to stick his hands into the pools of blood and guts, just to check for breathing. When he did find someone alive, moving them to where they could be treated took even more time given the limited manpower. It would be a while before they could get to work on burying the dead.
He could only take so much of that. It was one thing to be able to deal with dead bodies after a relatively “clean” battle such as the Dwarves had done with the separatists, it was entirely another to sift through the carnage of a major battle as he was doing. He was finding fewer and fewer survivors as he went and figured he’d done his duty. Even Euleilla’s efforts seemed to be slowing, and if she couldn’t find someone alive in this muck there was no way he could.
He made his way to the tents, where Rykeifer was translating various discussions between the doctors and the wounded.
“You’re lucky it was us you fought,” the militia captain was saying to a man being worked on as Maelgyn approached. “In most kingdoms, people who get amputations die more than half the time. In your own, one out of four don’t survive. Here in Svieda, however, our doctors have learned techniques that allow nine out of every ten survive.”
The wounded man didn’t seem to respond. He’d been giving a numbing agent and wasn’t entirely aware of his surroundings – some form of opiate, most likely. The doctor had his saw out, and was cutting through the bone.
Maelgyn winced, and tried to shut out his view of the treatment as he made his way over to the captain.
“I’m done here,” he said. “I’m not finding anyone else, and it looks like Euleilla’s about to give up, too.”
“Okay,” Rykeifer said. “Just what are you going to do, now?”
“Clean up,” Maelgyn sighed. “Go back to the inn I stayed at last night, and soak in the hot springs for a while.”
“I wish I could join you,” Rykeifer nodded. “But I agree. You’ve done your part. I’ll send your wife to join you when she gets here.”
“Thanks.” He looked over the wounded. They’d identified almost eighty dead and forty wounded, so far, and likely would find more of the former. He shook his head. “And this is a small battle?”
“Yeah.”
“Something’s odd about this,” Maelgyn said. “Why would Sho’Curlas attack here? What do they hope to gain?”
“Good question,” the militia captain snorted angrily. “There was no cause for Sho’Curlas to attack us. I would have bet more on Oregal attacking us, but they never did. I think they just got a reputation for grabbing land by taking some from their enemies each time they were attacked and won. Sho’Curlas was always a more insidious aggressor. They have been conquerors from the shadows – making ‘defensive’ alliances, and using those alliances to dominate their other allies. A ‘one world government’ is their goal, and the way they make it sound one would think they were peacemakers. The reality is they just want more land, and frame it in terms of wanting ‘peace.’”
“In other words,” Maelgyn said, understanding lighting up in his eyes. “They want to use calls for peace as yet another weapon in their war of conquest.”
Rykeifer nodded. “‘World Peace’ is an idealist’s goal, isn’t it? It sounds so appealing, unless you start to think about what that means. If you think of peace as the absence of conflict, you’re forgetting that everything is conflict. Swimming is conflict between you and the water. Standing is conflict between you and the ground. Breathing is conflict between the air and your lungs. The only peace, then, is death. Peace as an end to violence? Sure, that’s a laudable ideal... as long as you realize it can only be an ideal. But when you start failing to defend yourself or start harming others to create ‘peace,’ you’ve lost sight of what it is you really are looking for. I never trust anyone who says they want ‘World Peace,’ because they are either too idealistic to be sensible or they are dishonest about what they are really after…”
Maelgyn’s face darkened. “‘Peace’ sure didn’t seem to be on Hussack’s mind when he slaughtered Gilbereth.”
“The kings of Sho’Curlas do remember their goal,” Rykeifer cautioned. “It is the real reason they fight. It’s just that some only keep to it in name. When we made our initial alliance with them, their king appeared to be a decent man. I believe he was an idealist in the cause of ‘peace,’ and someone whose heart was in the right place, even if I believe his methods were wrong. I doubt the same could be said for this current crop of royalty, however.”
“‘Peace’ is a hard goal for a nation to set for itself,” Maelgyn sighed, “But at least Sho’Curlas has one. If I ever become a king, I don’t really know what task to lead Svieda towards. Sho’Curlas desires ‘World Peace by any means necessary,’ Oregal seeks unification of all of the Major Races under Human control, the Bandi Republic wishes to extend the lives of Humans until they are ‘as immortal as the elves,’ whatever that means, and the Divided Kingdoms of Poros seem merely to want to reunite humanity’s ancestral home... but what should Svieda be for? I’m not sure it has ever had a national goal.”
“Intellectual growth,” Rykeifer proclaimed. “Stability and security, prosperity, the rights of your people to live life as they desire. Those are noble goals, and those are the goals we Sviedans have shared for our nation’s entire existence. We launch few wars of aggression, but we have been known to start a fight when those things have been threatened. It is one of the reasons I feel our nation is worthy of my service.”
“Agreed,” came Euleilla’s voice, coming up from behind Maelgyn. He almost jumped; usually, he could sense her approach. She, however, seemed so weary her usually strong magic aura was quite dimmed. She was stumbling around almost drunkenly, except she wasn’t drunk, and didn’t look well at all.
“I’m going to go take a bath. Are you coming?” Maelgyn asked, watching her.
“Please,” she nodded.
He saw her stagger again, and immediately was at her side holding her up. Nodding farewell to Rykeifer, he half-carried her away. “Come on, let’s go.”
She sighed. Once they were out of everyone else’s hearing distance, she said, “I don’t think I can muster the strength to blindfold you this time. Can I trust you not to take too much advantage of the situation?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I suspect I’ll be too tired to do anything but sleep in the baths, myself.”
Chapter 9
Once more, Maelgyn and Euleilla were on the road. Elm Knoll had been busily digging graves as they left, but at least all of the bodies had been sorted. In the end, there were a hundred and thirty four killed with forty-three wounded. Seven of the wounded would likely be dead in a few days, but the rest of them would live... and within a couple of weeks would be marched down to a nearby city that could afford the manpower to imprison them.
The stop at Elm Knoll was probably the last chance Maelgyn would get to hear anything about the war for quite some time, so he hoped to get a last report on the situation along the front before leaving. There was the threat, however, that the raiders would make a second assault on the village. With that in mind, Maelgyn could not afford to risk capture by staying, even if his presence would increase Elm Knoll’s chances of surviving an assault.
So, he and Euleilla had discussed the matter as they soaked in their ba
th after returning from the battlefield. He hadn’t exactly kept his eyes closed on that trip into the hot spring, but only because he didn’t want to stumble face-first into the water. The way he’d been feeling, he doubted he’d have been able to keep from drowning if he had. He figured she knew, anyway – he could sense she was amused by his embarrassment over the whole thing.
They had talked extensively about whether to stay in town or leave. Or rather, he had talked extensively, and she had offered the occasional encouraging word or bit of advice here and there. The end result was that the two of them would be moving on towards Sopan even sooner than Maelgyn had originally planned.
He was a bit worried about how Euleilla’s presence – and position – would be taken upon reaching Sopan. That she was ‘married’ to him would probably be excused, given the way it happened – it would be embarrassing how it came about, but he was fairly certain that wouldn’t be the big issue. If he decided to stay married to her, however, that would be another matter.
Most marriages between royalty and peasantry were unpopular. Why this was so, Maelgyn never understood, but they were. Historically, many of them came about from a romance between a household guard or servant and one of the princes or princesses they protected. On rare occasions, a peasant marriage may mean a marriage between a royal and someone of heroic stature, or of great wealth, and these occasionally were well-thought-of in the public eye. Perhaps the most celebrated peasant-royal marriage was a combination of several of these.
Sword Prince Agaeb, who would later become Sword King Agaeb IV and one of the longest-reigning monarchs in Sviedan history, had in his employ a female guardsman – a rarity in that day, but more common now. That guardsman, the future Queen Amberry, had been the daughter of a wealthy merchant. She had run away from home to join the army, and had worked her way into position in the Royal court as a guardsman after many heroic acts on the battlefield.
In Treachery Forged (The Law of Swords) Page 10