The gods... Malledd wondered about the gods.
He knew any number of old stories about the gods, tales his mother had told him when he was a child – stories about how the gods had tried to choose a king to rule the heavens, how the various major deities had tried to attain the position and had failed; stories about how the gods of old had meddled in human affairs, pitting human kings against one another for the amusement of their divine patrons, playing tricks upon men and women, striking down any mortal who happened to offend them. He knew the tales of how the gods had arranged the world beneath the Hundred Moons so that people could live upon it, and how they had worked together to create humanity, each of the gods helping for his or her own reasons. He knew that the gods had created the sun to light the world and give it life, and had fueled it with their own glorious essence, and that they took turns maintaining it, each for a three-day shift, creating the triads by which the Domdur measured time. He knew that when the greater gods were on duty, in the summer, the sun burned hot and fierce, while under the ministrations of the lesser gods it grew cold and weak, and winter came.
Dremeger, the god of smithcraft and therefore Malledd's own patron, took his turn stoking the solar furnace in late autumn, which pretty clearly showed his place in the hierarchy.
It had been Ba'el, mightiest of all, who had been fueling it on Midsummer's Day, when Malledd was born, but his turn for this year had just passed. Vedal, goddess of the earth, who fed the crops by the road and made them grow, was on duty right now, as Malledd recalled – and the sun was hot and fierce indeed. She was clearly not a deity to be trifled with.
On the other hand, Malledd remembered that she had failed in her bid to become the queen of the heaven because she was so soft-hearted that she had fed her own enemies and let them grow strong enough to overthrow her.
That brought him to the point of thinking about the gods as he walked. The Domdur Empire had been appointed by the gods in their councils to rule all the world beneath the Hundred Moons. They had decreed it to be so to put an end to the useless fighting between the various nations, and also, some of the stories said, to stop themselves from using mortal tools in their own squabbles.
Malledd was not sure he believed that particular detail. Even if gods could be sufficiently petty to fight amongst themselves, would they really have used mere men and women as their weapons? And if they had, how did the storytellers know it?
But that was irrelevant. The point was that the gods had chosen the Domdur to rule the world, and had made certain that the Domdur eventually did rule the world. For eight hundred years the Domdur armies had marched out to conquer because the gods had told them to, in no uncertain terms. Often entire nations had fallen to the Domdur without a fight simply because they saw no point in opposing those the gods favored; their defeat was predestined, irresistible, and to struggle against it would only delay the inevitable at the cost of many lives and great suffering. The Domdur Empire was divinely ordained.
But then, how could this black wizard in the east dare to defy the Empire? Why did the gods not strike him dead for his effrontery?
Had all the gods become as foolishly soft-hearted as Vedal? Were mortal men to fight and die to pay for the gods' unwillingness to intervene?
Or were they more like Samardas, god of wisdom, who had failed to become king because he became so involved in his own thoughts that he did not notice the others plotting against him? Were the gods simply not paying attention?
The withdrawal of the oracles seemed to fit this second theory better than the first. It was as if the gods had cut themselves off from humanity. Their voices were no longer heard, their advice no longer given – and now their command that all the world should obey the Empress was being defied, and they did nothing.
But the sun still shone, and the crops still grew, and the moons still drifted across the skies – the gods were still there, still keeping the world running.
Maybe they had withdrawn themselves not from everything beneath the moons, but only from humanity. Maybe they had finally had enough of human folly, but still took an interest in the natural world.
If they had – what, then, of their chosen champion? Was there still a champion?
And if there was, was it he?
Malledd had mulled these questions over many times over the years, as he lay in bed waiting for sleep or hammered at a piece of iron. He had never reached any conclusions – or at least, none that survived the dawn, or the completion of whatever he was making. He simply didn't have enough information to know for certain the will of the gods.
His musings on the road to Biekedau were no different. As he came in sight of the dome of the Biekedau temple he had still not come up with any new insights – only more questions.
Chapter Nineteen
The company of champions, Lord Duzon thought as he looked out under the dripping brim of his hat – ha! That was a sorry joke. Of all the ill-disciplined, mismatched, egotistical, thumb-fingered troublemakers beneath the Hundred Moons, this bunch had to be the cream of the crop. If the gods really had chosen anyone from this crowd to defend the Empire – anyone other than himself, at any rate – then the gods were quite mad. Of the forty-one men nominally under his command, Duzon considered all but a handful to be useless. Half of them couldn't even ride a horse.
Vrai Burrai, of course, didn't need to ride a horse – he flew everywhere with that confounded gadget of his. He was up there now, flashing through the clouds like heat lightning and making the horses nervous.
Most of the others, though, were splashing through the mud on foot leading their mounts, or bouncing in their saddles like a bunch of children. Jolting about like that tired the horses – not to mention how sore and stiff the riders would be when they stopped.
Some of them could ride, of course – the second sons and petty nobles were doing fine, and Prince Bagar almost seemed more at home on horseback than on foot – but the village strongmen and the assorted poets and madmen were simply a disaster waiting to happen.
Lord Kadan had suggested that the company might serve as light cavalry – General Balinus had been complaining about a severe shortage of cavalry – but Duzon was not about to send some of these fools into battle on horseback unless Ba'el himself came down from his moon and gave the order.
Duzon took off his hat and shook it to dry it, then glanced up. The rain seemed to have stopped – just a summer shower, as he had expected. They were common enough. The sun would probably be out in a moment, and that would brighten everyone's mood, including his own. The mud would dry – it wasn't deep, just a thin slick where the rain had mixed with the dust; the hard-packed earth of the road itself was still solid under foot.
He scanned the horizon. Wheat fields, pastures, farmhouses, stretching away forever to the north and south; before and behind them the Gogror Highway, which was little more than a strip of bare earth between the farmers' fencelines. There were allegedly towns and inns along the highway, but none were in sight at present. In the west Seidabar could be seen only as a thin line of smoke rising and blending with the clouds; the city walls and towers were finally out of sight. Ahead...
Duzon squinted, then wiped the rain from his eyes with his sleeve and looked again.
There were people on the road ahead – still a few miles away, Duzon judged; he couldn't make out much beyond faint shapes. A trading caravan, perhaps?
Or had they caught up to the vanguard of new recruits that Kadan had sent out to reinforce General Balinus? Duzon hadn't really expected to see those troops until they reached the staging camp near Drievabor, on the Grebiguata, where Balinus was supposed to take command. Duzon wondered how far they were from the Grebiguata. He turned and looked over his men again.
They were a sorry-looking crew – in fact, Duzon judged they looked far worse in company than they would as individuals. Most of them were big men, accustomed to standing out in a crowd simply by virtue of their bulk, and in this company, where everyone was at least
good-sized, they seemed sadly diminished. They weren't all in uniform; some had been eager to don the Imperial scarlet and gold, as it was far better garb than they had to begin with, but others had argued that the divine champion would scarcely wear the tunic and breeches of a common soldier.
A few had argued that Lord Kadan should dress them as generals, or at least officers, but Kadan had stood fast – commissions and commands in the Imperial Army were earned, he insisted, not given out as favors. If one of them proved himself to be the true champion he could wear any uniform he pleased, but until then they would dress as ordinary troopers, or they would provide their own clothes.
Lord Duzon glanced down at his own uniform. He had accepted a captain's commission, and dressed the part, but he had kept his own red cloak and his plumed hat, as well. Fortunately, the two shades of red of tunic and cloak went well together, and the black hat and white plume looked good with anything.
He didn't honestly think he'd earned a captain's commission, but he'd had more sense than to say so in front of Lord Kadan, or in front of anyone else, for that matter. Commissions in the army were handed out as political favors, of course – everyone who mattered knew as much – but it was scarcely a practice Duzon, or anyone with any sense, cared to encourage. If Kadan wanted to say otherwise, and to keep his patronage to a minimum, that suited Duzon very well indeed.
For centuries it hadn't really mattered much if half the officers were incompetents, commissioned to placate their fathers or patrons. It hadn't mattered if they had no cavalry, either. The army hadn't needed to do anything but hunt down a few bandits and suppress an occasional riot. If the army was actually going to fight battles, though, Duzon, for one, wanted officers who would win, and who would lose as few men as possible doing it, rather than officers with the right ancestors and friends. He liked to think he'd be here in any case, but he had to admit that he had yet to actually prove himself.
And with the motley group that was following him across the plains right now, he wondered whether he'd ever manage to prove anything.
“All right, men,” he called, “Mount up, those of you who've been resting your horses! There's a company of men ahead of us, and whoever it is, I want to give them a good show! I want us to ride past looking as if we were all champions!”
“But we're all muddy!” someone called. Duzon noticed another man eyeing his horse with obvious distrust, clearly not eager to return to the animal's back.
“So are they!” Duzon shouted. “Listen, I want the men in uniform in the fore, those in their own clothes to the rear – let's see if we can't look a little more like a company, and not a bunch of wanderers thrown together by chance!”
Almost as soon as the words were out, Duzon realized he'd probably just made a mistake. The competent riders were mostly in their own clothes – those were the petty nobles who had resisted accepting uniforms. It would make a better show to put them in the lead, the others trailing behind.
A leader couldn't be constantly changing his mind, though; he'd made his decision and he'd best stick with it.
The company stopped moving while the men slowly sorted themselves out.
“Come on, come on!” Duzon shouted. He glanced up the road at the party ahead; they were now drawing farther away, almost out of sight, while the company of champions rearranged itself. A fat lot of good it would do to get the company into decent order if they couldn't catch up with whoever that was without coming all disarrayed again.
The temptation to shout and swear like a drill sergeant was strong, but Duzon resisted it; a good officer led his men, he didn't bully them. And the champion should inspire by sheer example.
Duzon straightened his own cloak and hat. He glanced down the road. Was that an imperial banner he saw on the horizon? It looked like one from this distance.
It still might just be a merchant's flag, of course.
The men had sorted into two groups now, uniformed and otherwise, and Duzon urged his mount forward.
“Form up in rows of four,” he said. “Any more than that and we'll be bumping fences or trampling someone's crops. You, you, you, and you, take the lead, and you, you...”
Overhead, Vrai Burrai glanced down – he didn't want to get too far ahead of his nominal companions. They weren't directly below him, though. He swooped around, and spotted them half a mile back, stopped for some reason; they seemed to be moving horses about.
Vrai Burrai was mountain-born, and didn't think much of horses. He'd never been on one until this journey, and he never wanted to be on one again. They were such finicky creatures. There were all these mysterious and complicated things you had to do with horses, not like good machinery or New Magic at all. This re-arranging was probably yet another silly ritual to keep the infernal beasts from running amok or breaking legs or something.
At least that Lord Duzon hadn't insisted that Vrai stay mounted. His supplies were all bundled on his assigned mount, and his assistant, that Veruet woman Bouditza, was leading the animal along.
Vrai wasn't sure he'd have stayed on the horse even if Duzon had insisted, but it was a relief not to have to find out. Duzon seemed like a sensible boy, really; it was almost a shame he seemed determined to play all the traditional military and aristocratic status games. He might have made a good New Magician.
He'd rather be the Domdur champion, of course. Vrai Burrai snorted. As if there were a Domdur champion any more! It stood to reason that if the gods were no longer directing the Domdur government, then they'd no longer be providing it with its chief enforcer. If the Empress and her Council wanted someone to intimidate the peasants, Vrai Burrai thought, they really ought to accept his own offer to take the job. Not that he particularly favored the Domdur, or had anything against the peoples they'd conquered, but he saw the sense in a single world state, and the one the Domdur ran wasn't unpleasant. They let most people do as they pleased, and they kept people from killing each other, and that was about all the Diknoi had ever asked of any government.
That was more than they'd had before the Domdur conquered Govya; they'd had to fight constantly against their neighbors. Vrai Burrai had heard the stories. It was all nasty and messy and inefficient, and that history had made Vrai a supporter of the Domdur cause – at least until something better came along.
This Rebiri Nazakri, with his campaign of terror and revenge, did not sound like something better. In fact, he'd killed a few New Magicians, and Vrai took that as a personal affront. Which was why Vrai Burrai was up here, watching Lord Duzon sort out horses and riders, instead of back in Seidabar teaching the New Magic. He wanted to see for himself what the Nazakri was up to. He wanted to see if this black magic was related to the New Magic, and if so, how the Nazakri had managed it – Vrai certainly couldn't turn corpses into warriors. He could make them walk; he'd discovered that much in secret experiments that the doddering old Empress would almost certainly not have allowed, had she known about them. But he could only move them puppet-fashion, one step at a time, and with great effort, and from the reports it was quite clear that that was not what this Nazakri was doing.
He wanted to stop Rebiri Nazakri and his army from breaking up the Domdur Empire, unless they had something better to replace it with, which they apparently did not.
So Vrai Burrai had proclaimed himself the gods' chosen defender of the Empire. Claiming to be the divine champion was as good an excuse as any to get himself sent back east into the fight. He could have simply left, but this way the Imperial Council didn't object.
Vrai decided against flying back down to rejoin the others; they'd probably set him to tightening girths or something. Instead, with a twist of his staff, he turned eastward again, and looked down the road that way.
There ahead of him was a large body of men – several hundred, he judged, perhaps even a couple of thousand, and all wearing red, from what he could see. Imperial troops, he supposed; hadn't he heard something about a vanguard being sent out from Seidabar to reinforce General Balinus? He ha
dn't paid much attention.
Whoever they were, they were marching down the Gogror Highway in a great red river between the green fields on either side. Toward the head of the column he could see banners flying, red and gold with runes on them, though he couldn't read them from this distance. He decided to take a closer look. He swooped eastward and lower.
The banners bore the names of regiments. This particular group included the Biekedau Regiment, the Nuzedy Regiment, the Daudenor Regiment, the Second Agabdal Regiment, and the Second and Third Seidabar Regiments, according to their standards.
Vrai Burrai smiled derisively. Banners and uniforms and marching – what foolishness! The Diknoi had never bothered with any of that when they fought; they had relied on traps and deceptions.
Then the smile vanished. The Domdur had defeated them anyway, despite the gaudy costumes and bright banners. The Domdur might seem foolish, but they had still won.
Vrai hoped the present-day Domdur were as fortunate as their ancestors. He hovered for a moment, watching the standard- bearers.
Carrying the regimental banner was an honor, of course, but Onnell of Grozerodz, the man carrying the banner of the Biekedau Regiment, thought it was an honor he'd gladly have forgone. The confounded thing got heavy after twenty minutes, and each standard-bearer served an hour's duty.
Onnell had fallen back behind the other standard-bearers. As long as he stayed ahead of the main body of troops no one cared if he dropped back a little, and the walking was easier if he let others trample the mud first.
He didn't quite see the point of displaying the colors out here anyway. Who were they trying to impress? No enemy was in sight; no one would see them but the local farmers, and who cared what they thought?
He shifted the banner's shaft slightly, and admitted to himself, he cared what the locals thought, actually – he was proud of Biekedau and of Grozerodz and he wanted the regiment to look good. But he didn't think the banners were going to impress anyone.
Touched by the Gods Page 16