by Guy Antibes
“I didn’t willingly fight you!” he said in Toryan. Tembul took each sentence and interpreted the conversation.
Tembul struck a Truth pose. “Say it again.”
“A magician forced me to fight for them. I’m a Toryan.” He looked wildly at those standing around him with his eyes getting wider as he must have realized that the only Toryan among those pointing weapons at him was Tembul.
“Then sit up and tell us your story. What of these others?”
He looked at the other men. “This one I know. We were impressed at Pomzu.”
“Impressed?”
“The Kandannans took over our lands through treachery. A faction deposed the king, my uncle, and ensorcelled our magicians, making them into Kandannan fighters. The new leaders threw my entire family into the army in one capacity or another.”
“Riotro’s Adoption Spell,” Honor said after Tembul translated. “This sounds like his doing.”
“Riotro, the Black Master?” the young man said. “He came to our city along with Kandannan envoys.”
“And what of the Princess who traveled to Bennin?” Trak said.
“She fought with her father and made his life miserable until he sold her as a slave to the Benninese emperor last year. That helped make everyone mad at him, so it was easy for someone else to take over. Now, she is the last of the Toryan royal line. My mother was born a bastard, so my family doesn’t count,” Sirul said.
Trak wondered about King Basiul. “There is the Eastern king.”
“An elected position,” Tembul said. “Elected for life and then another is chosen.”
So that was why the princess was so important to the Kizru nobility. She was a pawn in Eastern or Western Torya, as well as a trinket to the rulers of Bennin.
“You knew of this, Tembul?” Trak asked.
He nodded. “It’s not public, but it’s hard to keep the princess’s sale secret. Lenis has probably blabbered about it everywhere he has been. This is the first I’ve known of magicians and non-magicians being forced to fight. Your ‘worry’ spell has just been spread among all of us, but we had no idea that so many of the fighters were Toryan. We fight brother against brother, and the Kandannans can just watch us chew each other up.” Tembul’s face filled with fury.
The other men began to rise. They all seemed to have had similar stories to tell. Tembul translated a few of their comments and then led them away to be interrogated by the officer corps, leaving Trak and his fellow foreigners.
“I don’t think the world is in very good shape,” Neel said. “I wonder what Norland is up to?”
“You don’t think they would attack from the north?” Ben said. “I’ve only been to Norland once in my life, and I found the place cold in every way. Unfriendly people living a severe life… even worse than Colcan.” He laughed. “I can say that, now that I’m in exile.”
Rasia shot him a scowl, but still nodded her head.
~~~
Chapter Fifteen
~
Valanna’s eyes opened in the dark. She listened to the words of a few soldiers coming and going from the front of her tent. Perhaps they were scouts or men on watch.
“Today,” she said quietly, barely making out Nullia’s still form on the blankets piled on the other side of the tent.
“Yes, today,” Nullia replied sitting up. “I won’t be able to sleep another moment. Did you just wake?”
Valanna nodded and then realized Nullia wouldn’t be able to see. “Yes. I’m fully alert.” She sat up herself and hugged her knees. “I suppose it’s close to morning.”
Nullia crept to the tent flap and poked her head outside. “Dawn’s not far off. Let’s see if we can get something to eat and grab extra food to take with us. There is no telling how the day will go.”
They both dressed and went out to wash up and took bags with them to finish getting ready for the day. If the enemy overran the camp, they would be able to escape with whatever they carried on their flyers.
Whispering men and a few women had already begun to cook porridge and heat up wine and ale. The army would stuff itself before the sun rose, ready to fight the oncoming enemy. After breakfast and after securing some stale bread, cheese, and skins of water, they lugged their belongings to their flyers, kept just inside the woods that bordered the little plain.
“Good luck, Nullia,” a man’s voice said. Sanda Pillora had been moved closer to their flyers. He sat on a blanket, but the soldiers still tied him securely to a tree. “I mean it, this time. I’m free of any spells, as you know. After the battle, if you win, come see me for a more proper apology.”
“Let’s hope both sides leave you alone,” Nullia said. Valanna noted a softness in her voice.
Sandy’s words surprised Valanna. He had directed them specifically to Nullia and obviously didn’t include her. She looked over at Nullia and wondered if there might be something there, after all. She wished there was and that the persuasion spell truly had forced the change in Sandy’s traitorous behavior. Valanna smiled for a moment. The sky began to lighten, and Nullia looked a little embarrassed. It wasn’t the time to pursue a conversation on Sandy’s relative merits, so they both moved briskly to their flyers and secured their bags.
In moments, they stood in front of Colonel Mirona.
“You can leave for your first scouting report. Make sure you are up high enough to observe the enemy’s placement.”
Valanna had a thought. “Why don’t you come up with us, Colonel? There is probably quite a bit that we will miss, looking at the organization of the rebels.”
The Colonel blinked and began to stutter. “M-me in that?” He pointed at the flyer. “Up there?” His fingertip moved upwards.
Nullia nodded. “I think that’s a great idea. I can take one of your officers up with me. We can make as many trips as you are able to withstand.”
The man grunted and pulled on his jacket, as if to prepare himself to run or to mount a flyer. “Take me straight up and then straight down,” he said.
Valanna led him to her flyer where she did just that. At nineteen stories in the air, his knuckles whitened as he gripped the central support.
“Never seen a sight like this since I commanded an outpost in the mountains on the Colcanan border.” The shock of fear seemed to have passed as he looked down at the army milling about below. “As long as we are up here, let’s go to the front of our defenses.”
Valanna turned and used the wind pose to take them far above the barriers his army had created.
“I can see gaps in our defenses from up here.” He went silent for a few moments. “Now let’s head toward the enemy. I can make out their tents in the distance.”
Valanna took them over the forest to their left. “Less chance for any arrows or fireballs coming up from the wooded areas,” she said.
“Good, good.” He didn’t face her, but she could hear by the tone of his voice that he agreed with her actions. They flew for a few minutes, and he told her to stop. There was a bit of a breeze coming up, so Valanna still maintained her pose but adjusted the intensity of her spell to keep them stationary.
“They are barely rising,” the Colonel said. “At this rate, the battle might not start until midday. That will give us time to get our lines sharpened up.”
Valanna turned the flyer around, and they headed back to their lines. The Colonel asked her to stop again, so he could look at his defenses from the enemy’s point of view.
“I would have never guessed how much information I can get from this birdseye view,” he said. “We must hurry to make some modifications.”
Officers clustered in front of the Colonel’s tent as Valanna set the flyer down. He hustled them into his tent. “We have work to do.” He stopped and turned around, looking at Valanna and Nullia standing by their flyers.
“I’m assuming you took out most of their magicians, so I’d rather not use you two to fight,” Mirona said. “I want you to keep watch so that the rebels don’t try any f
lanking maneuvers. We’ll have scouts wearing…” he put his hand to his chin, “blue caps so you can identify them from above. That is all for now. Return if you have information, but I’ll be wanting another flyover in the middle of battle… say half an hour or an hour after the first clash. Am I understood?” He disappeared into his tent.
Both women nodded.
“We can do so much more,” Nullia said to Valanna.
“I’ve already done quite a bit, taking Colonel Mirona aloft. He could see the battlefield much better in the air. I’m more comfortable getting information than killing people.” She shuddered at the memory of the Blue’s death in the middle of the rebel’s march.
“That makes two of us. Let’s go,” Nullia said.
~
Nullia had stood above Sandy, talking quietly with him, when Valanna left to seek out more provisions. A soldier presented himself. He looked as young as she.
“The Colonel would like you to begin your scouting activities,” he said. His eyes were a bit wide, and Valanna noticed the young man’s nervousness.
She wondered if her own fears were mirrored in him. He left her stuffing supplies in Nullia’s bags, now tied to the flyer’s support post. She walked over to Nullia. “Time to go,” she said.
Nullia patted Sandy’s bound hands. “We will return,” she said.
Sandy chuckled. “I’m counting on it.”
Nullia looked back at him when they boarded their flyers and took off. Nullia would take the right-hand side of the battle, facing north and Valanna would take the left. She flew high up above the soldiers and stopped the wind pose to let the flyer drift over the Loyalist soldiers, who looked up and waved at her. She leaned over and did the same. Maybe her presence high above gave them a little jolt of courage. Valanna hoped so.
Onward she flew, along the road leading west. Clouds had begun to gather, and she felt the patter of drizzle on her face. Valanna wondered what advantage or disadvantage a rainy battle would give the Loyalists. Since they were positioned behind fortifications, that might mean their defenses would work better.
She paused often to peer down through the tree cover, trying to notice anything that moved. The rain began to intensify so that she couldn’t see clearly twenty stories below. Knowing that a lower height put her at more risk, she remembered the Colonel telling her that knowing the position of the enemy would save lives. She took the flyer down to ten stories and continued to weave back and forth over the forest.
To her right, the plain could be seen. The enemy army advanced in the increasingly heavy rain. She stopped her flyer to look at their order of battle and heard the snatches of sounds beneath her. A clinking of metal and voices, muffled by the trees and the rain, still reached her ears. Valanna looked up and realized that she would not be able to hear them at twice the height.
How many were down there? She wondered if she should head back to the Colonel, but thought she would try to find out the boundaries of the force before she returned. She zigzagged over the forest and estimated the force in the hundreds. That was enough. She stepped to the other side of the flyer and assumed a wind pose, heading towards the camp when she noticed her skin tingling. Further north, a bolt of lightning lit up the gloomy day and made her jump. She quickly assumed the pose of a shield just before a brilliant light blinded her eyes and a peal of thunder deafened her ears. The flyer disintegrated under her feet. Valanna froze, not knowing what else to do as she tumbled down towards the ground. The thought of keeping the shield intact forced her to remain conscious. Visions of breaking her body on the ground below began to overcome her senses, but she stiffened and began to bounce down through the bows of trees. She crashed to the ground. The shield burst, and an image of Trak flashed in her mind just before she fainted.
~
Nullia’s eyes widened at the first bolt of lightning to the north. She immediately dropped down to treetop-level and headed back to the camp with as much wind as she could produce. Rebel soldiers were below her, and then she passed them by and finally landed in front of the Colonel’s tent.
Officers ran out. Navino and Colonel Mirona reached her first.
“Soldiers on the right, coming through the trees,” she said after regaining her breath. “Where is Valanna?”
“She’s not here yet,” Navino said, crouching down after a flash of lightning washed the camp for an instant.
Nullia looked at the sky. The rain began to increase. “I’ll go up to find her.”
The Colonel grabbed her wrist. “No, you won’t. The woman has enough sense to come in from the rain. Now how close were the soldiers?”
“A thousand paces, but not closer. If Valanna isn’t back, you have to assume that something has happened to her and that there are soldiers coming in from the west as well.” Nullia had to concentrate on the battle until the Colonel dismissed her, but it seemed he didn’t need any further information.
The officers ran back into his tent as the rain became heavier.
Her worries about Valanna continued as she lifted the flyer up a few stories and landed much closer to her tent. Nullia trudged through newly-created mud, lugging her belongings as the rain turned into a downpour. So much for being prepared to run. The flyers had their disadvantages in bad weather, she thought, and Valanna was caught in it.
She thought of Sandy, bound to a tree and took an oilcloth cover from her bags and made her way to the prisoner. He looked miserable, but not quite soaked, being under the trees.
“Here. A portable tent,” she said.
“Now there is a woman with an thimbleful of compassion. It’s like a beacon in a sea of enmity,” he said. “You look more troubled than an ill-used merchant getting his feet soiled by some objectionable substance.”
Nullia sat down on pine needles after arranging a shelter of sorts over Sandy. “Valanna is missing. She hasn’t come back and I know her to be smart enough to get out of this,” Nullia said, as another flash lit up the world followed by a roll of thunder a few seconds later.
“Ah, a deluge like this won’t last forever,” Sandy said. “Showers like this are typical at this time of year. Mud is still mud.” He pointedly looked at Nullia’s filthy boots and the sodden hem of her dress.
“Then I will be prepared to go look for her when the storm passes.”
Sandy tried to take her hand, but his bindings didn’t permit it. “The battle will soon be in full tilt,” he said. “What did you find out?”
“Soldiers are heading through the woods as well as marching straight down the plain.”
He nodded his head. “I would probably have done the same. It’s not a very creative move. Valanna will be right in the middle of it, if she came down.”
Nullia never thought of herself as an emotional woman, but the thought brought her hand to her mouth. “What will we do?”
“We?” Sandy said, grinning. “I like it that you included me in that.”
“I will need help to retrieve her. Do you think the Colonel will be willing to give me a squad of soldiers?”
He put out his hands. “Not in time if Valanna is down. Untie me and we will fly out as soon as the lightning passes.”
Nullia pulled out a small knife she kept hidden in a pocket of her dress and quickly turned Sandy into a free man. “Now are you going to overpower me and run towards the rebels?”
Sandy smiled. “You know the truth, well enough. I am yours to command, in all sorts of ways.” He showed his teeth and stood up unsteadily, rubbing his wrists. He wrapped the oilcloth around him and looked up at the sky, which had lightened a bit. The roll of thunder sounded south of their camp. “We are out of the worst of the weather and now the battle can properly begin. Let’s go.”
They ran to the flyer. Nullia quickly put them up twenty stories into the air. “No one will see you if you don’t stand up.”
“You won’t have to worry about that. Did I ever tell you I am afraid of heights?”
Nullia gave Sandy a grim smile. “You have now,
” she said as she assumed a wind pose and flew over soldiers running to their positions. She headed west, looking down at a substantial Loyalist force marching into the trees. Swiveling her head east, another force had just been lost from view on the right side of the camp just north of where Sandy had been tied up.
They flew high over the camp, and then headed north searching the woods.
“I can see the glint of arms down there,” Sandy said. “The forces will clash in moments.”
Scanning the tops of the trees for Valanna’s flyer, disappointment and alarm hit her hard. No Valanna. The troops had passed below, it seemed, so she lowered the altitude to the treetops and scanned all around.
“Do you see another flyer?” she said.
“There is something above the trees at about our height over there.” He pointed to something floating above the trees to their right.
A few planks of wood were scattered in the branches of the trees, while others floated in mid-air.
“Those must be the remains of her flyer,” Nullia said. She looked down at the ground below where the trees didn’t block her sight and didn’t see anything.
Sandy stood from his prone position and examined the forest below. “Would these pieces move in the wind?”
“They would, but the lift spell does make them resist the wind a bit.”
“As I thought. If she fell, then she would be north of this,” Sandy said. “The storm’s wind came from the north. There aren’t any soldiers below us.”
Nullia moved the flyer slowly to the north. She seemed to have gone too far and headed back on a track further east.
“There!” Sandy said. “Something has been caught by the trees.”
Nullia moved the flyer over to where Sandy pointed and lowered their altitude. Sandy leaned over and plucked an oilcloth sheet that hung from a branch. “This is like what you used to shelter me from the rain.”
“It is!” Nullia said, both excited to see signs of Valanna’s possessions, but fearful of what they’d see when they found Valanna. “We can take the flyer down over there.” She pointed to a tiny clearing.