by Guy Antibes
“At some point, you’ll become a full man,” Able said, with a smile.
~~~
Chapter Thirteen
~
Asem clutched the railing on the flyer and looked down at the rebel forces camped below them. Being above the tops of any trees allowed them to fly at night, although he still feared running into something in the dark. At least the armies traveled right through the central plains, the heart of Santasia.
According to his rough count, the rebel forces were larger, but less orderly. He could plainly see where their trained forces camped by the uniform spaces of the fires and the vague outlines of the camp. The rabble camped haphazardly and made up about two-thirds of Riotro’s army. Asem wouldn’t permit such a thing if he ran the rebels. He’d sprinkle the veterans with the common soldiers to get everyone trained up to a higher level. Confident soldiers won wars.
The Ferezan warriors, his people, had no shortage of confidence, but they always had a shortage of men. Women were not permitted to fight in Warish. Once King Marom’s father, Asem’s uncle, made the intensive effort to unite the desert people, the Sultan of Balbaam ruled a corrupt and chronically weak Warish. Even now, the Warish didn’t have the forces to invade Pestle and keep it; hence the Long War as his uncle had always called it, working to weaken his enemy from within.
The Long War had just about ended. Another few years and Warishian warriors would be able to ride in and take over. Pestle would whimper, but most would welcome the change. Prince Nez might have made such a thing possible in the next year, but he had listened to his own counsel too much and his father had to kill him in an assassination attempt. Nez’s demise left no one suitable for the Pestlan throne, not that the prince had ever been suitable in the first place, Asem had always thought.
As soon as the Espozian revolt ended, Asem would take Kulara and Valanna back to Warish, but that action would be for another day.
“Let’s head west to see if we can see any evidence of the Kandannans,” he said to Kulara. Asem barely had the ability to lift the flyer. He had to rely on his second wife to fly and he smiled at the thought. Kulara thrived on challenges and relished situations where she could show just how proficient she was. Asem always thought they were a very good team. He smiled as he saw the fires pass beneath until they were all left behind.
They flew until Kulara stopped her pose. “Time to rest. We must be ten or more leagues to the west of both armies. There is nothing out here but the lights of villages and one small city. Nothing else but the occasional cluster of farms.”
Asem nodded, but it was almost too dark for Kulara to see him since clouds covered the moon. “No Kandannans to flank the General’s army, at present. Let’s head back.”
The trip eastward bored Asem, but he recognized the need for patience long ago in his line of clandestine work for King Marom. He wondered how Valanna and Nullia fared in the east. No one expected them to run into any trouble. Niamo had ordered the small column north in order to attract any scattered rebel units.
He spotted the Loyalist camp. Fires made up a large square in front of the General’s tent. Officer’s Commons, Misson called it. All of the staff officers’ tents lined an assembly area. “Get us over the square and I’ll get us down.”
As soon as Kulara had the flyer stopped in front of the general’s tent, Asem posed the spell of descent. He found it easier to get the flyer to descend than rise. They landed and drew a crowd of officers. General Niamo pushed his way to the front.
“What did you see?” the General said.
“Your western flank is clear for leagues. The army is massed to your north, just west a bit. We could barely see the road, but I would imagine they follow it,” Asem said. Two-thirds of the army is rabble, untrained and likely under-armed. The other third had orderly camps. I would tally the total to be less than double your size. Late tomorrow or the next day, we will confront their vanguard if we move north and they south at the same pace.”
Niamo pinched his lips with his thumb and forefinger. “Come off of that cursed perch and show me on the map inside,” he said and then turned without another word. Asem obediently followed.
Misson and Garono Dalistro, along with officers he had met before and a few he hadn’t, played with markers on a map hastily drawn on a large tanned skin taking up all of a large square table.
“Can you show us on this?” Misson said. “We have drawn a large map and have picked the brains of everyone we could to make it match the reality up ahead.”
Misson pointed to a cluster of wooden blocks, some stained red and others unstained. Asem could see that the unstained pieces represented the Loyalists. Asem picked up a stained piece and found the bottom unstained, so he turned it over.
“Let’s call this one a trained troop.” He began flipping pieces over and dug the arrangement of the fires out of his head. As he perused the map, he could see where the troops must be positioned. They were indeed along the road that ran north and a bit west.
“The trained troops are here.” He began putting the markers in order. “The untrained troops are arrayed like this.” The markers with the stained tops were arranged in a much more haphazard fashion.”
Niamo grunted. “So you think the rabble is not under military authority?”
Asem looked up. “Just because they don’t know how to set up a camp?”
“Precisely. No one in my army would permit a camp of that size organized without a plan.”
Asem thought of his view of Niamo’s camp. He could clearly see straight lines and organization, even at the edges. “Ah.” He had learned something of waging war that had not even dawned on him in Warish. “They can’t defend the perimeter of the camp, is that it?” he said in his heavily accented Santasian.
Misson chuckled. “I would have thought the Warish knew that.”
Asem’s face burned. Misson now knew a Warishian weakness, but it wouldn’t matter. The strategy to defeat Pestle didn’t require battles of any size. He should have known better than to make that observation. He drove fingernails into his palms as penance, angry with himself.
“Live and learn,” Asem said as casually as he could. “Would you risk fighting them at night?”
Niamo nodded. “We will back up tomorrow to a better-suited battleground, just enough to let them get closer, and then we will force the untrained rebels into the military camp and bottle them up.”
“Stop,” Bonigo said. “What if Riotro leads the non-military faction? Could this be a trap?”
Garono Dalistro pointed around the back of the camp. “If we come at them in a bunch, a spell thrown by a posed magician can have a devastating effect, but if we are spread out, even Riotro can’t stop us all.”
Asem immediately saw what Garono meant. “Of course. Then you don’t need to send your entire force.” He looked down at the map for a choke point and found one. “This river and this line of woods narrows. Even if they come at us full-force we can meet them and be confident of no kind of flanking maneuver.”
“Indeed,” Niamo said. “Men, we retreat to here and prepare to fight the rebels at the place Asem has so adroitly pointed out.” He looked at his officers standing around the table. “Take your fastest units and deploy them as if the enemy will set up camp in roughly the same configuration that Asem saw. We will cut the rabble from behind while our main lines will attack them head on.”
~
Asem left the tent to find Kulara. She had gone to their tent. Asem opened the flap to see her kneeling in front of a low table filled with meat and side dishes. He grinned.
“This looks like home,” Asem said. Although spices did not quite smell the same, the way Kulara prepared their food looked just like it would have had he entered a desert tent. “You have outdone yourself.”
She laughed. “The camp cook responds well to my death threats. I taught him how to cut the vegetables and the meat, and I did the rest.”
After kissing his second wife, Asem knelt down and let Ku
lara slap sauce on a small flat disc of bread and fill it with meat and vegetables, never too much. She put it to his mouth and fed him. Asem couldn’t help but grunt in delight at the experience. He’d tasted more authentic food, but that was only part of the experience.
He quickly told her of the order of battle that would begin at dusk tomorrow. “You have done well today,” he said
“And I will tonight. There is battle tomorrow and we must make sure we both know what we fight for.”
~
The wind picked up since Valanna had lifted the flyer up twenty stories. She could see the enemy arrayed below, making their way to the battlefield the Colonel had prepared. Three of the magicians held tight to the vertical support of the flyer. The three remaining magicians sat on Nullia’s flyer some distance away.
She put the flyer down in the forest. Ten men jumped out from the edge of the small meadow with their arms filled with enemy uniforms. Another band of scouts would be meeting at the same time with Nullia and her magicians on the other side of the army.
They all changed their clothes. Even Valanna put a uniform on, although it didn’t fit her well at all. Few would notice in the march to battle. Her unit of fourteen would split up into four groups and make their way through the enemy ranks to where magicians marched and administer the ‘worry’ spell all along the way. Even if they were committed to Riotro after they came out from under the Adoption spell, magicians would be incapacitated for the duration of the battle. Any ‘Persuaded’ soldiers, like Sanda Pillora, would find their true minds again.
Nullia and Valanna had talked about what they would do the previous night. They both admitted their fears and held each other’s hands as they went over their strategy and how their work would save lives in spite of the grave danger their actions would put them in.
In less than half an hour Valanna walked out of the forest, surrounded by disguised Loyalists, heading in the same direction as the rest of the army to begin their work. Valanna would head for the center of the column, and the other two groups would range closer to the edges.
As they walked, the ranks behind them began to become disorganized as the spells began to wear off. Magicians would faint away and those ‘persuaded’ began to stagger as the worry spell did its work.
Keeping their heads down and walking a little faster than the army in general, no one paid attention to them as they made their way slowly to the front. Valanna passed a group of eleven magicians joking and denigrating the common soldiers. Their condescending attitude made it easy to make quick work of them. She hurried forward to be gone from them when their Adoption Spell would wear off.
She wanted to congratulate the three men who accompanied her, but they were to say nothing as the walked along. The head of the army was just ahead. Valanna spotted Nullia getting closer.
Valanna broadcast her worry spell as forcefully as she could. Of the three officers leading the army, two of them began to shake their heads in their saddles. It wouldn’t be long before they fainted. She looked over at Nullia, who nodded and they began to slow up and let the army move past them, continuing their incessant incantation of ‘worry’.
“Time to turn around,” she said to her companions.
One of them called, “Make way! We bring a message to the rear of the column!”
Valanna followed the men in her unit as they quickly moved to the rear. She kept pointing and saying worry to every officer and non-uniformed person she could as they headed back. They had nearly reached the point where they had exited the forest when she noticed a commotion up ahead. A Santasian officer had detained one of her magicians in the group on the other side of Nullia. Before she could reach them, the magician threw a fireball at the officer and began to run. He saw her and headed straight towards Nullia, but before he could reach her, a mounted soldier cut him down.
With her heart in her throat, she fought off growing panic and slowed down gradually moving to the side of the column, and her group followed her out of the march, slipping into the woods.
She looked back for signs of pursuit but didn’t see any, so the four of them walked purposefully and didn’t break into a run until they were totally out of sight. Valanna had no idea where the flyer was, but her men were scouts, and soon she stood by her platform. Her mission had been completed, but a valuable Blue-level magician had been killed. She would have to leave the Green in the midst of the soldiers. They hadn’t planned to return to the flyer until after the battle, but Valanna felt she had to get back to Colonel Mirona.
One of the scouts joined her on her flyer, and rose with her into the air. She could see swirls of activity among the soldiers. The worry spell didn’t work at the same speed on everyone, and that would only help confuse the enemy more.
She did know that she had incapacitated thirty or more magicians, more than making up for the loss of the Blue, but that didn’t erase the horror on the face of the magician when he frantically spotted Nullia, his last view of an ally. Valanna didn’t see how she could ever forget the look of fear on the magician’s face.
She assumed her wind pose and flew west for a bit before heading south to Mirona’s army. The enemy vanguard was less than a league away, much closer than she would have thought, but it had stopped. Perhaps the officers in the front had finally fainted.
She lowered the flyer and flew over the heads of a friendly army. Men raised their hands in greeting. She spotted the Colonel and stopped the flyer close by, letting the soldiers create a space for her flyer in their midst.
“Success, but at a cost,” Valanna said. “We lost a Blue robe, at least. We have slowed them up and neutralized most of their magicians and a number of soldiers, but they are still heading this way.” She remembered that she and her companion still wore rebel uniforms. “I have to change, if you’ll excuse me. Any sign of Nullia?”
“Not yet. Get some rest and something to eat. You’ll be using your powers in a different way before long, and don’t forget to change out of that uniform,” the Colonel said. He beckoned the scout to follow him into his tent. Valanna started to follow, but decided that the scout would be better at maps than she, anyway.
Valanna gave the man a little bow, which was her version of a military salute and sought out her tent. She passed a mess line along the way and picked up some food, bringing it with her, and collapsed on her blankets. She didn’t know how long she slept, but Nullia nudged her with a toe.
“I’m more than happy to see you, Valanna. We all successfully retreated to the flyer when that poor magician bolted.” Nullia shook her head. “I’m rather glad they killed him out-of-hand, or he might have exposed the rest of us.” She sat down on her own blankets and began to eat.
Valanna looked at her uneaten tray of food and sat up, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. That gave her some time to recover from the callousness of her friend. How could she so easily shed the shock of the loss of one of their own? She now had a better idea of what ‘hardened’ meant. She knew Asem could be hard, but she had never thought of herself in those terms, and now she understood why.
“Didn’t his death mean anything to you?” She looked at her food, not wanting to touch a thing.
“Of course it did,” Nullia said. “But still, he threw his life away. In any confrontation, you must look at the overall context or you will never summon the courage to continue. I imagine you can generate enough confidence to move forward, but when something doesn’t go your way, you must set aside one defeat to seek out another victory.”
“I don’t see how that has anything to do with the Blue’s death.”
“He headed straight towards me, Valanna. I saw the entire thing. What would have happened if he had the presence of mind to throw up a shield?”
“He’d be alive.”
“He was dead the minute he lost his composure.” Nullia took another bite, ignoring the shock on Valanna’s face. “Another few steps in my direction, and a soldier would have noticed me.”
Valanna could o
nly blink her eyes in confusion. She felt more fear than she did when she walked among the enemy troops distributing worry spells. She knew their mission involved risk, but she didn’t really feel the risk until the magician panicked. Her eyes welled with tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, the only words she could get out of her mouth.
Nullia narrowed her eyes. “Sorry for what? Sorry for the magician’s death? I am as well and wish with all my heart it hadn’t happened, but it did. We have to move on. Think of what you did just after he died. Did you panic?”
Valanna shook her head. “I quickly left.”
“That is because, despite his death, some rational part of you took over and led you quietly away from danger. You haven’t seen enough of this, yet. Perhaps by the end of tomorrow’s battle, you’ll learn how to handle death a little bit better. It won’t eradicate the grief you feel, but it will allow you to function and not let it eat you alive. Have some of your food; you’ll need the strength.”
Nullia lapsed into silence and concentrated on eating. Valanna looked listlessly at her tray, but glanced at Nullia and began to eat. She reviewed her actions, strolling through the enemy army. She had exercised courage, even though frightened. Fear really hadn’t gripped her until the magician bolted. Which was the reality? Could it be both? War suddenly became so revolting she had to leave the tent as her stomach heaved. Both, she thought, once she had emptied her stomach.
She dreaded tomorrow. Visions of a field of death filled with blood drove into her mind, making her shake with terror. Would her body decorate the battlefield? Nullia? Lieutenant Navino? She looked at soldiers passing by, staring at her. Her hand went to her face and then she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She turned and Nullia stood with her arms open.
Valanna sought their comfort. She began to cry as Nullia shepherded her back into their tent. They both sat with their arms around each other as Valanna continued to sob.
“Why me? Why does this just affect me?” she said to Nullia.