Of Limited Loyalty cc-2

by Michael A. Stackpole

  The Fifth Northland Cavalry Regiment had started west with a full complement of four hundred and fifty men. He’d left the fifth battalion with their supplies, and sent the first to Fort Plentiful. That gave him two-hundred and seventy men-three whole battalions-to throw into battle, and that is exactly what he had done. He had tossed them into danger and thirty-seven of them had emerged from it.

  It did not matter that he had little choice. He could not have done things any more wisely. His choices were to do nothing and watch the trolls slaughter the Volunteers, Foresters, and Rangers, or to send his men in to do what they could. Even in Tharyngia an action such as the one he took would have left his troops vulnerable to a counter-charge by heavier cavalry.

  But the destruction, so complete. Ian opened his eyes, then closed the ledger book on his camp table. He’d written down the names of every man who had died. He remembered about half the names, and had faces to go with one in twenty-mostly officers. He recalled the drills before St. Martin’s Cathedral, and that out of the three battalions that had performed so smartly, only three dozen men remained.

  The thing that galled him the most was that people would make excuses for what happened. The horses they were riding had no training for combat, so the counter-charge could not be avoided. Yet, had there been no counter-charge, and had the trolls all been slaughtered, no one would have mentioned the horses’ lack of training. Instead his men would have been praised for their horsemanship, since that would have held the key to their success.

  The Mystrians-at least, those who had not run off-had been full of honest praise for the cavalry. In the days since the battle men had whittled and planted hundreds of little wooden crosses. Others had gathered flowers to sprinkle over the dried field. People, alone or in the small groups, tended to drift toward where the cavalry had died, offering prayers. Even the Shedashee leader had sung a lament for the dead.

  Ian had walked out there alone, and no one had seen fit to interrupt him. He supposed they thought he was praying, commending men to God, perhaps hoping to spot something that he could identify and carry back to a widow or grieving parent. He appreciated the solitude, less than because he wanted to be alone, than he dreaded trying to explain what he was doing out there.

  He’d not gone out to pray to God to deliver the souls of his men but to beseech his men to forgive him. He had no doubt that his soldiers had been destroyed because of his moral failing. Their deaths were God’s punishment for his sleeping with Owen’s wife. He couldn’t deny that, couldn’t escape it. His weakness had doomed them.

  And the most terrible thing about that realization was that he could not give her up. Though he had walked for hours across the fields where men who had trusted him had been trampled into gobbets of flesh and splinters of bone, and though he tried to use the horror of their deaths as a wedge, he could not conceive of a life apart from Catherine Strake. God might have punished him here by killing his command, but He had allowed Catherine to bring him back from the dead for a purpose.

  Ian bowed his head and clasped his hands together in prayer. “Dear merciful God, peer into my heart. Know I am Your servant. Do with me as You will but, please, let me fulfill a purpose which is pleasing unto You. This is all I ask, in Your name.”

  He sat there for a moment, holding his breath, hoping God might send an immediate sign. He neither saw nor heard anything. So he opened the ledger again and, confident that he was, somehow, doing God’s work, he started down his list and made notes.

  Gisella could not help but notice Catherine Strake’s agitation. She immediately took the older woman’s hands in hers and led her to a couch. “Madeline, please make some tea. And see if we have biscuit, not the ones I brought back from Mrs. Bumble. Something fun.”

  The servant nodded and withdrew.

  Gisella immediately reached out and tipped Catherine’s face up. “What is it, my dear? You’ve been crying.”

  Catherine shook her head and looked down again. “No, Highness, I’m just being silly. And I do not wish to bother you. You have so much on your mind already.”

  “Catherine, please, we are friends. You were the first, after my husband, I told I am pregnant. I would not have any secrets from you.”

  Owen’s wife squeezed her hands. “Thank you, Highness. I just… you will think me silly but… well, I went to Temperance and took your message to Mr. Peas. The order will be filled and shipped. Tomorrow morning we will see the flatboats go up the river with it.”

  “Well, then, that’s good news.” Gisella made no effort to hide her smile. The message from Plentiful that had come in the night previous had been short and spare, even terse. Bethany had sent it; Gisella recognized that much. The message contained no casualty lists, but the requested supplies left no doubt that a battle had been fought and that people had been badly hurt. She’d immediately sent back a request to know how her husband was, but it would not arrive until tomorrow, and she would not hear until Friday.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Then why the long face?”

  Catherine sighed, her shoulders slumping. “In town, I felt faint. I went to our townhouse and, well, do you remember four years ago, that awful summer?”

  “Yes, the Anvil Lake expedition.”

  “Well, do you remember, I fainted then?”

  Gisella did distantly recall Catherine having been under the weather, then the cause came to her. “Oh, Catherine, you’re pregnant! Oh, that is so wonderful!”

  Catherine glanced at her, then burst into tears. “I don’t know what I shall do.”

  “What do you mean?” Gisella hugged her and stroked her back. “You will have another beautiful child, Catherine. Maybe a son. Owen would like that. I know Richard would rejoice in having a playmate. This is wonderful.”

  The weeping woman drew back. “No, you don’t understand. You see, when I lay down, I fell asleep, and I had a dream. A nightmare, a horrible nightmare. I would think nothing of it but Owen and the Prince had set store by those visions. And I saw Owen hurt and dying and he didn’t know he has a son. He lay there and I know it’s impossible but, I was certain that if he knew he had a son, he would fight harder, he would come back to us. Please don’t think I’m crazy, Highness, I could not bear it.”

  “No, no, Catherine, no, never.” Gisella stroked her hair. “What we are going to do is to write a letter and when the shipment to Plentiful comes up the river, we shall give it to Drayman to take to Owen.”

  Catherine collapsed into Gisella’s arms. “I thought of that, but it will be too late. It’s probably already too late. I’ve prayed, all the way back in the coach I prayed, but I am undone. My Owen will be dead.”

  Gisella held her and rubbed her back. She would, of course, immediately send a message to Plentiful to let Owen know the happy news. That she could do and then later say she had gotten a message from someone passing through about how Owen had survived a battle and was looking forward to the addition to the family. The delay would torture Catherine, and Gisella would have avoided that at all costs.

  Even though it would cause her friend pain, Gisella would not share the secret of the thaumagraph with her. She’d thought her husband perhaps just a bit over-cautious in forbidding Owen to tell his wife about the Mystrian magick. Owen understood the why of the prohibition. Catherine’s upset over a dream proved she was silly enough to accidentally reveal a secret. Gisella decided to honor her husband’s wishes, but she would not let her friend go uncomforted.

  Gisella took her by the shoulders and set her back, then clasped Catherine’s hands in hers. “I make you a promise here and now, Catherine, that Owen will know about his child. He will know before the supplies arrive. I shall get that message delivered even if I have to throw a saddle onto Peregrine and ride him all the way west myself.”

  Catherine sniffed and brushed tears away. “Are you certain? You’re not just saying that because you want me to stop crying?”

  Gisella smiled. “No, darling, because I know when
I cry, you do not think ill of me. Our men are at war, so we must take care of each other. So, I shall handle this problem for you, and we shall have no more tears, agreed?”

  “Oh, Princess, I cannot tell you how great is my relief.” Catherine smiled sheepishly. “I may yet write a note to go with the supplies, but in my heart I now know Owen knows, and that brings a peace for which I cannot thank you enough.”

  Chapter Fifty-six

  25 May 1768 Octagon Richlan, Mystria

  Nathaniel hunkered down beside Kamiskwa, the two of them nestled on the lee side of a big granite outcropping. “I ain’t thinking that Rufus being right there in the middle of things is the onliest reason Prince Vlad ain’t going to be happy about this.”

  Kamiskwa didn’t even nod in response. Immediately after the fight, they’d headed west and a bit north toward where Prince Vlad had predicted the Norghaest were making a magick reservoir. A half-dozen Rangers, including Justice Bone, had come with them. The Rangers remained a mile back, ready to help out if needed.

  The weather had turned nasty, with storms blowing in from the northwest. They brought an unseasonable chill and dumped the sharp and icy snowflakes that heralded a long spate of winter weather. It felt like the proverbial cold day in Hell. Nathaniel wasn’t ready to bet on what would or wouldn’t happen, yet was willing to allow for things to be worse than the worst he could imagine.

  He nudged Kamiskwa. “You ignoring me, or is you just froze?”

  His brother turned to him with a smile. “Let me show you.” Kamiskwa scooped up a handful of new-fallen snow and made to rub it over Nathaniel’s face.

  Nathaniel drew back. “Now, if this here is a way for you to wash my face with snow, I’m here to tell you I won’t be a-laughing.”

  “I would teach you the magick, but it will take time.”

  Nathaniel nodded. “Go ahead, then.”

  Kamiskwa ran his hand across Nathaniel’s eyes. The snowflakes thinned to a single layer and locked together into a crystal lace. Light glinted from the angles, sparkling like rainbow jewels. Nathaniel glanced over and saw a fading blue glow from his friend’s hand. He was about to comment, but as he looked past him, what he saw stole his words away.

  Up to that point all he had seen was Rufus in the bottom of the valley, roughly half a mile down a wooded hillside. Rufus, with the troll cavalry set up to the west, was pacing and gesticulating and acting pretty much the way Nathaniel expected a lunatic to act. He still wore his robe stripped down to the waist despite the cold. The chain scar and some new livid bruises showed up against his pale flesh. He definitely looked as if he was dying of a wasting disease, and Nathaniel’s only regret in all that was that it made him a smaller target.

  All that shifted with the snowmask. First, ringing the valley, Nathaniel saw eight points at which blue-green energy flows fractured. Half of their flow poured in rainbow streams into the valley, filling it with a fog alive with vivid color, the iridescent hues of a dragonfly’s wings. The other bits traveled straightaway to more points, to join and split. From the southwest, on a direct line from the outpost, a larger energy river hit the Octagon, providing most of what was filling the basin.

  As amazing as that was, it could not compare to the figures working within the energy. They appeared more substantial than the fog, yet still had a phantasmal sense about them. Rufus clearly saw them, because his words and gesticulations sent them off in various directions. They appeared to be the Norghaest of the early visions, the golden people, all young and carefree, mostly female. They flew through the fog, drawing strands of energy from the eight points of the pool itself. They established thick lines, then split them, stretching and thickening them again. They quickly framed buildings and towers, columns and porticos. The skeletal buildings they raised reminded Nathaniel of the outpost, and some of the Norghaest even bent to creating statues of tentacled creatures.

  “I ain’t sure what I am seeing.”

  Kamiskwa turned his back to the construction for a moment. “Obviously they are building a city-a colony. I think what they might be doing is laying it out and planning it. Then wherever they are, they will shape the pieces and, as my father did in moving us to Fort Plentiful, they will bring the city here.”

  “That’s some powerful magick.”

  “It is, to us. What if it’s not to them?” Kamiskwa watched again. “We would survey, then start cutting trees. You would quarry stone. We do what we do because we have the tools to do it. For them, using magick may be easier than using an ax or a hammer and chisel.”

  He fell silent as one of the Norghaest, a woman, flew around and then up toward where they watched. Her long, dark hair floated gently behind her. She wore a gold loincloth and bracelets of gold, but nothing else to hide her lithe form, long legs, and soft breasts. Nathaniel thought her easily the most beautiful woman in Creation.

  She landed at the hill crest, barely a dozen yards away. Rufus looked in her direction and shouted something at her. She dismissed him with a wave, then gathered power in both her hands. She brought them together, forming the energy into an indistinct ball. She patted the edges with the same sort of clumsy motions young children use when packing snow onto a snowman.

  Yet at her touch, sharp details sprang out. With a few casual gestures she shaped the glowing energy into one of the squatting guardian figures from the Antediluvian ruins. It grew twelve feet tall and was nearly half that wide and deep. Its flesh rippled with scales and the muscles beneath twitched as if it were alive. Nathaniel would have sworn that the tentacles around its mouth writhed.

  The woman caressed the statue’s large eyes, much in the same way that Kamiskwa had run his hand over Nathaniel’s face. In the wake of her gesture, the guardian’s eyes closed.

  She sank to a crouch and moved quickly toward the two men, appearing as a ghost. As she drew close, light glinted from a simple gold circlet which had been hidden by her hair, and a slender gold chain onto which had been hung a large, dark pearl. She pulled the latter from around her neck, silently snapping the chain. She held it out clutched between forefinger and thumb, and the air around the pearl shimmered as if it was rippling water.

  Kamiskwa reached out and plucked the pearl from her. Their fingers touched, just for a heartbeat. Kamiskwa gasped. He fell back and Nathaniel caught him as the woman rose into the air, then flew down into the valley once again.

  Nathaniel dragged Kamiskwa down the hill and behind another snow-clad stone. “What was that?”

  Kamiskwa shivered, staring at the pearl in his palm. “I do not know. I… this pearl, it is a puzzle and a key but, to what, I don’t know.” He pulled his medicine pouch from inside his clothes and slipped the pearl into it. “The sentinel statue, she’s blinded it. It won’t see us.”

  “What about the other statues?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Nathaniel shook his head. “Why did she do that?”

  “I don’t know?”

  Nathaniel hauled Kamiskwa to his feet. “Who is she?”

  “I don’t know.” The Shedashee shook his head. “She’s the woman I’ll make my wife, but beyond that, I don’t know.”

  Wind howled outside the thaumagraph cabin. Prince Vlad nodded in Count von Metternin’s direction. “Thank you for the excellent summary of our situation.”

  The plucky Kessian smiled, then painfully lowered himself into a chair. “You are most kind in letting me continue to serve you, Highness, despite my diminished capacity.”

  “I cannot afford to be without your counsel.” The Prince glanced at Major Forest. “Your assessment?”

  The tall, slender man from Fairlee had arrived the previous afternoon with his Ranger contingent. He leaned forward to study the map on the table before him. A hank of white hair curled down over his forehead. He swept it out of the way with his left hand, and tapped the map with the hook that replaced his right. “The Norghaest base being here would make me feel good, but the twenty miles of distance did not slow him down in hit
ting Fort Plentiful. Just from what I saw coming in, I doubt that if my battalion had been here, we would have made that much difference. He had the heavy troops and we did not.”

  Forest glanced over at General Rathfield. “That’s not a slight on your men, General.” The Mystrian soldier ran his hook over the misshapen iron ball resting on the table. Owen had recovered it after the battle. The hook bumped over the knuckle and finger impressions stamped into the cannon ball. “Being able to do this to an iron ball makes Rufus far more dangerous than any enemy I’ve ever fought before.”

  Rathfield pointed at Fort Plentiful on the map. “This is precisely why I oppose the suggested advance to the Stone House and striking at the Octagon. Here we can prepare for him. No offense intended, Highness, Count von Metternin, but the defenses you were able to throw up were barely adequate for turning a rabble. With professional soldiers here-and I include your men, Major Forest, since they are well disciplined-we can prepare defenses which will stop Rufus.”

  Prince Vlad shook his head. “I disagree.”

  “Highness, if you think we cannot prepare adequate defenses here, how will your forces fare when you push them forward to a place where you can prepare no defenses?”

  Vlad sighed. His was a valid question, and one that the Prince had wrestled with, but for reasons he believed were entirely different than those that gave birth to Rathfield’s protest. Prince Vlad did not doubt Rathfield’s bravery or that of his men. In fact, he counted on it. But for them, this was an exercise in military science. The Fifth Northland Cavalry, devastated though they were, still could be counted upon as being some of the best troops in the world. Their charge, foolish though it might have seemed, required confidence and skill.

  “Msitazi said to me that I had to learn just as the Norghaest did. I have thought long and hard on that. I wondered what the Norghaest were learning when they attacked. What did we reveal about ourselves?” Vlad stiffly held up his left hand and began ticking points off on his fingers. “We showed them that our most fearsome weapon was only partially effective against their troops. We showed them that our use of magick is as a whisper before their bellowing. We showed them that some of our people were ready to break and run. We showed them that we had one dragon, and Mugwump really wasn’t much of a threat-less so, now. In short, we proved that we are cowardly, unable to hurt them, and little more than an annoyance.”