Touched by the Gods

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  On its face the idea was preposterous; the Domdurs' gods had led them to become rulers of all the world, had favored them in every enterprise. The Domdur lands gave forth the best crops, their waters yielded the finest fish; for a thousand years they had been unbeatable in battle. The gods advised and comforted them, sent champions to lead them, chose their emperors.

  But the oracles had fallen silent. Rumors said that the Empress' children were fighting over the succession, and the Archpriest would take no side in the debate. No champion had yet emerged among the Domdur – Lord Duzon was a dashing, heroic figure, but hardly of mythic stature, and while the spirit had just named Malledd son of Hmar, Rebiri Nazakri had never heard of such a person; if he existed, he wasn't visible at the forefront of the battle.

  And Rebiri Nazakri had defeated the Domdur in skirmish after skirmish.

  How could this happen, if the gods still smiled on the Domdur? Why was Rebiri faring any better than his father, or his father's father?

  It must be true, then. Something had happened to alienate the Domdur from their gods. Ba'el had forsaken this Malledd, and the gods had chosen a new ally.

  They had chosen him.

  A great swelling bubble of emotion rose in his chest, threatening to choke him – pride and joy and wonder, all commingled.

  The gods had chosen him. The Olnami would be the new chosen people, and he, Rebiri Nazakri, would lead them to victory.

  He had believed for years that he had a destiny, that he would bring down the Empire, but until now he had believed that he would do it despite the gods.

  Now he knew that he would do it because of the gods, and that changed everything.

  “Of course,” he said. “Of course I believe you, believe in you. Doubt you? Never again!”

  The voice was gone; Ba'el was not there.

  But he had been. Ba'el had spoken to him.

  He still did not know how the god intended to ensure that the nightwalkers could make the long march to Seidabar without being caught defenseless in the sun, but he no longer doubted that the god would do so somehow.

  And soon, very soon.

  They would have to be ready.

  He had a sudden inspiration – he didn't know how or why, but he suddenly knew that there were things he must do, preparations he must make. He arose from the cushion.

  “Aldassi!” he bellowed. “Asari!”

  #

  The carpenters, most of them volunteers from Drievabor, grumbled about constructing the “barricades,” but at Lord Duzon's urging they assembled them quickly and skillfully.

  General Balinus had agreed to the plan readily enough, and had left the implementation to Duzon. “You thought it up,” Balinus told him. “You know how it's supposed to work. So you get it ready. I intend to go into this final battle rested and ready, not worn out from worrying about details. You give me that bridge, Duzon, and I'll lead the men across it.”

  Duzon protested. “Sir, it would seem to me that as the... well, as the captain of the Company of Champions, that I should be – ”

  Balinus cut his objections short. “You thought it up; you make it work. If you're truly the champion and blessed with supernatural endurance, you'll still be fit to join me in leading the attack. If you're not the champion, then you have no grounds for complaint, do you?”

  Duzon could find no way to counter that. He thought for a moment of revealing Malledd's presence to Balinus, but could not quite bring himself to do so, since it would wreck his own claim forever, and Malledd wouldn't appreciate it anyway. Instead, Duzon set about harrying the carpenters.

  The construction preparations quickly used up all the small remaining stock of timber in the camp; when it became plain that that would not be sufficient Duzon sent the carpenters to their beds, and woke other men to serve as laborers, using the few surviving horses to rush them to Drievabor and haul back salvaged beams and planking from anywhere they could be found.

  Duzon had wanted to discuss the plan's feasibility with the New Magicians, but Vrai Burrai and Tebas Tudan were both out of camp, flying another mission to Seidabar, carrying messages both ways and bringing back whatever medical supplies they could carry. None of the others would commit themselves to anything without the approval of their seniors. Duzon, his nerves frayed by lack of sleep, left their enclosure in a state of barely-controlled fury at their obstinacy and at his sleeping superior's decisions. He returned to his own tent and forced himself to sleep until dusk.

  Collecting the materials took the entire first day of Sheshar's triad; in fact, the men and women and horses returning from Drievabor arrived after the nightly cross-river raid had begun. Defending the horses from nightwalkers while unhitching them was a fearsome job, one that cost three good soldiers and a female volunteer their lives.

  The word from Drievabor was not good; at least half the town's population had fled west, and most of those who remained stayed behind locked doors, terrified of nightwalkers. The only consolation was that there were no confirmed reports that nightwalkers had actually been there.

  On the second day the actual assembly of the raft-bridge sections began, using the carpenters who had slept that first day. Balinus reviewed the latest reports from the New Magicians' aerial reconnaisance, but again took no interest in the construction, leaving it to Duzon. Duzon, wearing his best remaining cloak and hat in an attempt to encourage the troops, moved quickly through the camp, observing the work closely.

  “You don't need 'em so tight as all that,” one man complained when Duzon reiterated the requirement that each panel be water-tight. “They can't put a blade or an arrow through so small a space as all that!”

  “Don't be too sure,” Duzon said. “Whether they can or not, I want these water-tight!”

  “But...”

  “Humor me, my good man. Pretend I might have reasons you don't know.”

  “But – ” The carpenter looked at the barrier again, then at the river, then back at Duzon.

  “Oh,” he said. “Very good, my lord.”

  Duzon nodded in acknowledgment, setting the rather bedraggled replacement plume in his hat bobbing, and as he did he noticed two shapes descending from the heavens – undoubtedly the messengers to Seidabar were returning. He walked on to the little enclosure where half the surviving graduates of the Imperial College of the New Magic huddled, intent on getting a straight answer this time.

  He found Malledd already there, deep in discussion with Vrai Burrai.

  That simplified Duzon's errand; he didn't need to explain what was planned, since Malledd already had.

  “Can you do it?” he asked.

  “We can do it,” Burrai replied.

  “How quickly?”

  Burrai considered that, scratching an ear thoughtfully. “Depends on whether we need to recharge, and how bright the sun is, and how much trouble we get from the other side. An hour at best, half a day at worst.”

  “If we have the sections ready at dawn tomorrow?”

  Vrai Burrai shrugged. “Sun's dim at dawn. Given a clear sky and no distractions, two hours. If it's raining and the Nazakri takes an interest, we should have it by noon – but I can't promise we'll be able to keep it intact very long if the Nazakri decides to destroy it.”

  Duzon nodded, and glanced at the cloudless, moon-speckled sky. “That should do fine,” he said.

  “There's only one more day,” Malledd pointed out. “We need to cross tomorrow.”

  “I know that,” Duzon snapped. “We'll be ready.” He looked eastward, at the earthworks that blocked his view of the river – and the enemy camp. “We'll finally be able to return the visits they've been paying us!” He hurried to inform the general.

  Balinus had been on the verge of sleep, but received the report.

  “Excellent, Duzon,” he said. “Revenge will be sweet, won't it?”

  The two men smiled at one another; then Balinus rolled over on his cot and began snoring, while Duzon headed for his own tent.

  T
hat night, though, when Duzon saw the number of nightwalkers that marched down into the river, he wondered whether enough of the Imperial vanguard would survive the night to carry out their grand design. Heretofore perhaps at most a thousand nightwalkers, usually fewer, had crossed on any given night, leaving many times more standing idly on the eastern banks, but on this, the night between the second and third days of Sheshar's triad, the marching ranks of nightwalkers seemed to go on forever, and the numbers left behind were far smaller than usual.

  And of the surviving Imperial forces – perhaps eight hundred soldiers, and two hundred assorted volunteers, including a dozen women and nine members of the Company of Champions – fully a hundred and fifty had already gone a day and a night without sleep in making their preparations for the upcoming surprise assault.

  The nightwalkers burst up from the Grebiguata at a run, and stormed up the barricades. The new wooden panels, rafts disguised as fortifications, were battered and then shoved aside, and the undead foe, still dripping wet from their walk beneath the river, poured over the earthworks and into the camp.

  There the Imperial forces met them with sword and axe.

  Duzon himself was in the thick of it, chopping at necks with his borrowed broadsword. He ignored the taunts of the nightwalkers, the mocking comments on his ancestry, the questions about why the gods hadn't struck down the foes of the Domdur, and hacked away.

  He found himself confronted with an open-chested horror, once a big, burly farmer, who wore a crude, heavy collar made of an old ox-yoke to guard his throat.

  Duzon had seen that stunt before. It did make the nightwalker harder to kill, but cutting out its heart or spilling enough of its brain would still dispose of it.

  “Ah, lordling!” the nightwalker called to him, raising the mace it bore. “Are you the one who thinks he's the chosen of the gods? Don't you know that Rebiri Nazakri has Ba'el's favor, not any of you decadent Domdur?”

  Duzon didn't bother replying as he dodged the blow of the mace. The collar made things difficult; instead of simply beheading his enemy he chopped at its head. The torn flesh and exposed ribs of its chest made the heart a tempting target, but the head was still the easier.

  The mace swung in a horizontal arc, and Duzon dropped to one knee to get beneath it. He thrust his sword upward and punched the point up through the nightwalker's throat and into its skull.

  That didn't kill it, but it did pin it in place and keep it from speaking. “A hand here!” Duzon called, as he held the sword steady and dodged the blind flailing of the mace.

  Someone obliged; an axe came down on the nightwalker's head and splattered brains and bone in all directions. Duzon shut his eyes against the spray of rotting gore and therefore did not see at first who had come to his aid. When he opened them again he saw only his helper's back, but the man's size made Onnell unmistakable; Malledd was visibly larger, and no one else came close to either of them.

  Half the nightwalker's head was gone, but Duzon realized it still wasn't defeated. Onnell had been distracted before he could be sure of the thing's demise, and the mace was still swinging. The nightwalker's eyes were both gone, along with most of its brain and skull, leaving it blind and stupid.

  Duzon ripped his sword free, then reached up and yanked the heavy protective collar off over the ruined head, then quickly lopped off what remained.

  The nightwalker collapsed at last, the mace missing Duzon's foot by a fraction of an inch.

  He stared down at the ghastly mess for a moment.

  The thing had said that Ba'el favored the Nazakri – exactly what Malledd had said. Either it was the truth, or Malledd himself was part of the enemy's scheme.

  He looked up and scanned the battle for Malledd, and found the big man bellowing in rage as he chopped the head from a nightwalker.

  It was the truth.

  Duzon had agreed to Malledd's scheme because it seemed like a sound idea for a counter-attack, quite apart from any other consideration. This larger-than-usual assault, though, and the nightwalker's words, now convinced him that Malledd was right, that Ba'el's Triad was what the Nazakri had been waiting for for so long.

  But Ba'el's Triad was when the night was at its shortest, when nightwalkers had the least power.

  Then what did the Nazakri plan? What was he going to use instead of nightwalkers?

  Was Ba'el himself going to intervene on the rebels' behalf?

  But no, Ba'el would be stoking the sun; surely, this would be the time when he could not interfere directly, even while his more generalized influence was at its zenith, his strength and courage spread throughout the world in the rays of the sun itself.

  His strength, his courage – and his other traits, as well; everyone knew that midsummer, Ba'el's triad, was when the most fights took place, when the most murders were committed.

  This year, it would apparently be when the key battle of this campaign was fought.

  Then Duzon spotted a nightwalker coming up on a soldier from behind and forgot about gods and grand strategies; he ran for the foe screaming, his sword swinging up to strike.

  On the far side of the river Rebiri Nazakri stood atop a crude wooden tower, watching the battle avidly. The staff in his hand whined eerily, and smoke swirled about it.

  “This is the last,” he said.

  “Father?” Aldassi said, puzzled. He was standing at the foot of the tower, waiting. Beside him Asari Asakari leaned idly on one of the tower supports.

  “This is the last of these raids,” Rebiri explained. “Tomorrow night we march onward, across the river to our final triumph!”

  Asari looked up. “We'll be taking Drievabor?”

  Rebiri glanced down. “You can if you choose, Asari,” he said. “I leave the living to you. I shall be leaving you, leading the nightwalkers to Seidabar; I'll have a few more orders in the morning, and then the rest of you are free to do as you choose. You've served me well, and I shall ask no more after tomorrow.”

  Asari blinked up at him, thought better of asking any questions, and began to look contemplatively around the camp.

  Rebiri looked at Aldassi. “You have your magic,” he said. “Stay with the others here, where you'll be safe – there's no need to risk your life at the gates of Seidabar. I've been promised victory, not security; I may die, and I would not have my line die with me.”

  “But Father...!” Aldassi began.

  Rebiri held up a hand. “When victory is won, and Seidabar is fallen, you can come seeking me,” he said. “If I still live, I should not be difficult to find.”

  “I... are you commanding me not to accompany you, Father?”

  “I am, my son. You may follow me, at a safe distance – but no more, please.”

  Aldassi stared up at him for a long moment, then looked down.

  “As you wish, Father.”

  Rebiri nodded. “Your friends in Seidabar,” he asked. “Are they ready for our arrival?”

  “They're not my friends,” Aldassi growled. “They'll do what they can, as they have all along.”

  “You haven't given your word that they'll be spared, have you?”

  “No, Father. Of course not. I've never promised a thing.”

  “I won't spare them,” Rebiri said warningly.

  “Good,” Aldassi muttered.

  He had never liked Lord Shoule anyway.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  The bodies and pieces of bodies were strewn thick across the open area behind the earthworks when at last the nightwalkers scrambled back out and headed for the water. Duzon had been standing and fighting in a morass of mud and blood for the last hour or more, unable to find more secure footing; now he kicked aside a severed hand and a dropped dagger to stand on a dry patch no bigger than a man's chest. His sword hung loose in his hand and he trembled with exhaustion as he peered to the east, at the brightening sky and the fleeing enemy.

  He couldn't rest, though. This was the day, the final day of Sheshar's triad, when they would build their raft-
bridge, scatter the Nazakri's living followers, and butcher the dormant nightwalkers.

  The sky was clear; there were no clouds to hamper the sunlight the New Magicians needed. A thin line of smoke trailed up the eastern sky – the rebels were lighting their cookfires, he supposed, or perhaps a watchfire hadn't yet burned out – but that was all.

  His own people wouldn't have time to cook, Duzon realized. They would barely have time to eat; they needed to get the attack under way now if they were to be sure of having time to drive away the guardians and behead most of the nightwalkers.

  “Where's the General?” he called.

  “Dead,” a woman answered, pointing at a bloody heap sprawled against the earthworks. Her voice was unsteady.

  “Oh, gods...” Duzon hurried over and looked down.

  General Balinus, the wily old soldier who had fought Rebiri Nazakri all the way from Matua, lay staring blankly up at the moons. His tunic had been slit across the chest, and the red fabric was covered with a darker red, already fading to brown.

  Duzon used his own sword to lift one edge of the cut and look at the wound beneath. He swallowed.

  There was no possible doubt. Balinus was dead.

  All six colonels had died in previous battles. That left Lord Captain Duzon as the highest-ranking officer alive, and meant that he was in full command of the Imperial forces in the area.

  He had wanted command, but not now, and not like this. It seemed grossly unfair that Balinus had survived so long, and died so soon before the end.

  “Cut his head off,” Duzon said quietly. “We'll bury him after the battle; we don't have time now.”

  “We... but...” The woman hesitated.

  Duzon looked at her face, and took pity on her.

  “I'll do it,” he said. “You don't have to watch.”

  “Thank you,” she said, turning away.

  Balinus' head was already flung back, exposing his leathery throat, but it was still one of the hardest things Duzon had ever done to bring his sword down on it.

  The first blow was not enough; he cursed himself. “I don't have time for this,” he said, and swung again.