by Garon Whited
We continued on by, turned a corner, and hurried west from there.
The approaching army, such as it was, had a few major weaknesses. First and foremost, it was not a unified force. While they were marching under a single banner, so to speak, they were really a bunch of individual units marching in the same direction. When they encamped for the night, they were strung out for miles along the road. There was no sense of overall organization, only clusters of tents. While they did post some sentries, most of their faith was obviously placed in the fact they were an army and no one would dare to attack them.
Bronze went into stealth mode with me. We whispered through the camp at the best speed I could handle—maybe thirty miles an hour, considering what I wanted to do. I put a spectrum-shifter on her to change her flames down to a non-visible spectrum. This doesn’t make them invisible, since they still exist. All it does is make them black instead of shining brightly. For a run through an enemy camp, this was good enough. She dappled her coat with blotches and shades of grey, and I had my Saber of Sharpness in hand.
Our course took us down the road, weaving occasionally from side to side to attack the parked supply wagons en passant. I gripped the saddlehorn and leaned far over to take off large slices of wagon wheels. We missed a few on the left side of the road—switching back and forth at speed on the twisty road wasn’t always possible—but we immobilized most of them. I aimed for the hubs and ruined two wheels per wagon, sometimes along with an axle. Bronze breathed dark flames on some of them.
Firebrand, meanwhile, focused its attention behind us as we passed by, manipulating campfires, lamps, lanterns, torches, even whatever wagon contents Bronze ignited. Anything already on fire decided to burn with supernatural intensity. Lamps became balls of flame and whatever fuel remained scattered around the vicinity. Whatever burning coals touched caught fire exceptionally quickly. Torches blazed white and half-exploded, scattering burning fragments everywhere. Tents, bedding, camp stools, random gear, all of it added to the spreading conflagration.
My goal was to inconvenience the hell out of everyone by destroying materiel, but I didn’t scorn to spread a net of invisible tendrils ahead to slow the reactions and responses of people we approached. It’s demoralizing to wake up tired in the middle of an attack. I let them run on autopilot while I focused most of my attention on slicing wheels.
Behind us, we left a trail of equipment in various stages of broken or burning or both.
As with the last time we did a long run through an army on the road, we managed to stay ahead, or not far behind the spreading alarm. Part of it was due to our near-invisibility in the dark, but most of it was due to the twists and turns of the local road. Upcoming sentries didn’t have a good line of sight, so they didn’t see the approaching disturbance. They heard shouts in the distance and came to attention, but it was too late. We ran into and through a little resistance, but armed men scrambling around in the road aren’t even an obstacle. Bronze normally takes great care to avoid stepping on people. When necessary, however, people are really no worse to her than squirrels are to cars. It takes a lot of squirrels to stop a car and they never had enough nuts in one place.
We passed a lovely campsite, complete with travel wagons, rather than cargo wagons. I desperately wanted to stop and inflict harm, but I thought it would be better to finish the run. The temptation to reduce the commanders’ and the wizards’ mobile homes—possibly even any priests’—to immobile shacks was a strong one, but I gritted my interlocking teeth and kept on with the task at hand.
Firebrand devoted some attention to them, though. Flames erupted inside half of them.
Lamps? I asked.
Dunno, Firebrand admitted. Incense, heating braziers, oil lamps, candles—does it matter?
The flames brightened, turning white-hot, then dimmed to normal fires as we continued along our path. Screaming followed us.
I suppose not, I admitted, as a burning figure in what was once a nightshirt emerged, banshee-wailing, out of one wagon.
At the far end of the army—if I may call it that—we paused to look back along the road. We couldn’t see much of the line for the curves in the road, but there was enough fire, smoke, screaming, and running around to be gratifying.
I’m game for a return trip, Firebrand suggested. Bronze tossed her head, snorted black flames, and pawed a trench in the dirt road.
“No,” I vetoed. “They’re all awake and grumpy. They’ll be up the rest of the night, too. Tomorrow, they’ll have to figure out how to continue with half or less of their wagons.”
Half? We nailed way more than half, Boss.
“But I only hit about half their wheels,” I pointed out. “They’ll consolidate. They probably have a few spare wheels, too. It’s okay. We’ve delayed and demoralized them.”
What good is that? They’re still going to come after you.
“Two things. First, from my perspective. I think it was Sun Tzu who said, ‘Excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.’”
But you just did.
“I’m not excellent, just moderately good. The point he was trying to make is not to put a premium on killing, but to focus on defeating the enemy. Attacking his will to fight, rather than his fighters.”
So you say. They won’t fight if they’re all dead. Not unless their necromancers are really good.
“And second,” I continued, ignoring Firebrand, “from your perspective. If they keep coming, as you note, whoever’s left—whoever hasn’t gotten the message—will roll up to Bridgefort and we’ll have to kill them. But there will be fewer of them.”
Oh. Well, that’s all right, then. We can kill the stupid ones.
“I thought you might like that.”
Tauta, 33rd Day of Milaskir
I had to persuade the guards at Bridgefort I was allowed to come in. They thought—and I approved of their thinking—that I might be an imposter. Velina called me on the mirror and confirmed my identity before calling the guard captain. They lowered the drawbridge and I watched, giving serious thought to how to make it harder to overcome. We might put a layer of rubber on the outside of the bridge—the bottom of the drawbridge—and face that with a layer of sheet metal. It would act as a bit of cushion against a ram. I considered how I’d go about getting the right kind of rubber and what sheet metal to use.
We detoured to Terauda, the village with all the metalworks, to pick up my message spear. They did a fine job of it, even to the steel head. It would be almost perfect as it was. It only needed a few minor tweaks and a couple of spells. I handled the inscription back at the keep and got to work on the spells. One of them inscribed letters of fire on the haft of the spear.
They’ll get the message, but they won’t get the joke: “Surrender Leisel.”
But getting all that ready was last night. This morning is a bit sticky and humid, but unavoidably so. According to the spies, the oncoming forces are notcoming forces, at least for the moment. It’s uncertain how much they’ve been delayed, but they’re sorting themselves out. It may buy us another day or two.
I used the time to call Naskarl on the mirror. There followed the usual delay in getting him to it. When he did sit down, he had a bland smile and no words.
“Hello,” I offered. He nodded acknowledgement. “I couldn’t help but notice we haven’t spoken of our tentative arrangement.”
“This is true. I really haven’t seen any reason to.”
“May I ask why?”
“You have a magic mirror,” he pointed out. “I am certain you know why.”
“I can think of a few reasons. On the other hand, I’d like to know yours. Which one do you think will piss me off the least?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean,” I told him, leaning forward, “I’m about to crush an invasion of my valley. Whether or not I’m angry enough afterward to crush you and your House will depend largely on why you’re sitting on your fat ass
, pretending there’s nothing to talk about.”
“How brazen.” He stifled a yawn.
“You know, I have to remind myself you don’t know who I am. You don’t fear me like you should.”
Naskarl lost his disinterested affect and leaned forward to match me.
“Now you listen to me,” he hissed. “You’re some pipsqueak, would-be lord of the hinterlands, trying to walk in the footsteps of the founders of the Empire. The Temple has ruled against your pretentious attempt to advance yourself. Thousands of warriors are marching on your ragged little settlement to bring it to heel and place it under the jurisdiction and control of the Empire. Any deal you might try to make is vain and foolish. You are the one about to be crushed, and I am only thankful we did not come to terms beforehand. It saves me from having to go before a mahrani and a priest to dissolve some agreement.
“It also pleases me to see your arrogance repaid as it should. Not only for your assaults and insults to my House, but your overweening pride in presuming you could rise, in your own person, to the highest ranks of men! You will die, as is proper, and your soul will be reborn as the lowliest beggar that crawls in a gutter. I might hope you are someday kicked into the offal by the boots of a scion of House Sarcana, but I would not foul them with your stink to do you such an honor.”
We glared at each other for several seconds while I reminded myself I had bigger problems. When I spoke, I like to think I kept my tone in check.
“I’m still curious as to your reasons for not calling me back,” I told him. “Because you’re a lackey to the Temple? Or you simply don’t think I’m in a position to fulfill my end of the bargain? We were on our way to a deal despite your personal dislike, so I assume it wasn’t a sufficient reason on its own.”
“You still pretend this is of material concern? With the forces of the Temple investing your territory?”
“They haven’t invested it yet. They’re still on the road. They’ve had some delays. Have you spoken with them recently?” I leaned back in my chair again and smiled my best unnerving smile. It’s the teeth that make people nervous. They aren’t obviously pointed, so only a dentist would realize what was off about them, but there’s a subliminal wrongness and it triggers something in the predator awareness functions of the brain. Naskarl frowned, clearly not pleased with the news.
“Is this why you’ve called?” he asked. “To trouble me to answer an irrelevant question?”
“Is it irrelevant?” I asked. “Your fate depends on your answer.”
“This conversation is pointless.”
“Close the connection,” I invited. “I’ll assume the worst and take no apology, conciliation, or reparations. And when I do send the Temple forces screaming back up the road to Sarashda, it will be too late for you to answer.”
He hesitated. In his mind, he knew the army sent out from Sarashda was capable of taking the valley, but he couldn’t shake the little, nagging doubt. Maybe it was the confidence in my tone. Maybe he simply wasn’t all that brave. Maybe it was the teeth. Sometimes I like my teeth.
Whatever the reason, he only hesitated for a moment. He severed the connection.
“I guess this means you’re not open to a deal for withdrawing your support,” I said to rippling afterimages in the mirror. It steadied down into my reflection and I shook my head.
I’m going to do something unkind to that man.
In the meantime, I need to fire some warning shots.
The weather in Sarashda was somewhat worse than in the valley. The sky had a faint yellow-green cast to it and that pre-storm smell. The sky was clear, or mostly, except for two sharp lines of clouds moving at different altitudes. The weather was cooking along quite nicely for my taste.
I took a deep breath of the air as I opened a small gate and dropped the spear through. Spells guided it to the target—the center of the dome of the Temple. It parted the stone like butter and vanished into the Temple. If all went as planned, it hit the floor, buried itself several inches, produced a thunderclap bordering on a small bomb, and quivered there for everyone to see with letters of fire glowing along its length. “Surrender Leisel,” with no mention of who the message was from or what any consequences for failure might be.
I couldn’t control if it hit a priest on the way to the floor, but that was at least partially why it produced a thunderclap when it hit. When it came to a stop, the thunderclap effect would slam anyone on the central platform several feet away, as well as blast the remains of anyone impaled on it into so much bloody hamburger and gristle. Mostly, though, it was an attention-grabber in case anyone wasn’t watching the platform when it hit. If it impaled a priest, doubly so.
The gods are angry. One of them, anyway.
With the opening salvo out of the way, I turned my attention to some skywriting. My initial idea was to use actual skywriting, either channeling water vapor through spell-based structures to spell out a message, or to simply put a large, simple illusion in the sky. Either way, there would be a fair amount of power expenditure and the upcoming storm effects might not leave enough in my budget. If I put a simple refraction spell and spectrum-shifter up there, shaped like the letters of a message, that would also work, but, dang it, on the scale I wanted—high up, just under the cloud layer, yet easily legible from the ground—would still be a moderately-large power outlay.
Can I make it self-powered? No, not really. Setting it up to draw in ambient magical energy and slowly replicate itself was possible, but the weather is a process, not an event. I can’t just put the weather on hold, so I have a bit of a deadline. However…
In the near future, there would be lightning dancing through the skies over Sarashda. Some letter-shaped fields of altered conductivity—that is, the equivalent of a giant neon sign—could be temporarily illuminated by a lightning charge. With a small power converter, some of the lightning could be diverted as magic for the spell and the rest of it could light up the sign.
I tested the idea in the lab, first. It worked in the small scale tests. Moving from small-scale to large-scale was quite a leap, though. It ought to work, but it would take some adjustment before I had godlike glowing letters of heaven’s fire demanding Leisel be surrendered.
Then again, this only works during a storm. Most people have sense enough to get in out of the rain. This is a message, damn it! People have to see it. If god pastes a glowing message in the sky and no one sees it, is it really a message? How do I get people to look up into a storm, rather than down to avoid puddles?
I gave it some thought while I tested my spell. The thunderstorm approaching Sarashda was coming in over the ocean, so no one should observe the testing process. I opened a small gate into the thunderstorm and did some medium-scale tests. And yes, I had a grounding spell between me and the gate. I may be a fool, but I’m not a complete fool.
Velina called and wanted instructions. Bronze courteously offered to pick her up from Bridgefort and deliver her to me. I accepted. Shortly thereafter, Velina and I consulted over the sand table while evaluating the enemy dispositions. She wanted to send out an attack force, but not the assault Tessera wanted.
“We can’t attack them with any success,” Velina told me. “We can harry them.”
“Tessera wants to get into a fight?”
“Yes. We shouldn’t, but the alternative is to let them come to us and demand our surrender.”
“Wait. What do you mean?”
“If they get even half that force to the other end of the bridge, they can demand surrender. They have clear superiority and they can take Bridgefort. We need someone out there to harass them.”
“I don’t understand. Why would we surrender? And why is a harassing force so important?”
“Because they have the superior force,” Velina explained, with the air of a professional trying to make a somewhat dense superior understand something technical. “If they move into position and we don’t have anything still mobile, we lose.”
At last, reali
zation permeated the thick, bony shell around my brain.
“You seem to be laboring under a misapprehension,” I told her. “We’re not surrendering, and they can’t take Bridgefort.”
“With all those troops?”
“With three times those troops,” I assured her. “They may be able to destroy the drawbridge, maybe even get men inside the fort, but I guarantee the survivors will run screaming in terror.”
Velina cocked her head at me.
“What?” I asked.
“I’ve never…” she trailed off, still looking at me. “I remember when you killed Tobar.”
“Yes? Are the Ak’anthai in that mob, somewhere? What’s their banner look like?”
“They have a contingent, yes. Not what I meant.”
“Oh. Sorry. You were saying?”
“I’ve seen you angry. You’re angry now.”
“I’m being continually beset by hostile forces when all I want is a quiet little place to myself. It frustrates me and pisses me off, yes. I’m also annoyed that Leisel has been stolen and I’m further annoyed at the lengths I have to go to in order to get her back—which may not work, I might add, and if it doesn’t, I’ll go to even greater lengths to punish those responsible. I’m more short-tempered than I used to be, which further angers me, and I’m trying desperately to not give in to it. So, yeah, I might be detectably angry! Given the situation, I think getting a little angry is not only justified but called for! Is that going to be a problem?!”
“No, sir!”
I ran a hand over my face and took a breath. Velina wasn’t backing away, but she was ready to head for the door. I checked my shadow and it was misbehaving. I growled softly at it and it settled down.
“I’m sorry. I apologize. You’re correct. I’m upset and angry. Please forgive me for being snappish.”
“Yes, sir,” she said to my shadow. I cleared my throat to get her attention.
“You observed I was angry. Please finish your observation.”