Nothing but Tombs

by Tim Stead

The Colonel opened the tent flap and gave an order.

  “Is Amberline alive?” Sheyani asked.

  “Yes, but still out cold. What you did…”

  “Was quite taxing,” Sheyani cut him off. “How much did we lose?”

  The Colonel nodded, accepting that she didn’t want to talk about her magic. “We lost three tents, one man dead, several others burned. Trivial damage, but that’s not important. One of the sentries swears he heard a horse snorting out in the darkness. It could be a wild one, but I’ve sent men out to search for signs.”

  Sheyani sat up. Her head swam for a moment, but she sipped the tea again and felt better.

  “You think this was deliberate?”

  Vandermay shrugged. “We’ll see.”

  A soldier arrived with a tray full of food. Sheyani bolted down the first few mouthfuls – hard biscuit, cheese, dried fruit again. She could feel her strength building once more, and it was growing light outside, so it must be dawn.

  “We have a day more on the road, and then we turn east into the hills,” she said. “Twenty miles.”

  “Through rough country? That’ll be more than a day, even with you piping them to their best.”

  Sheyani closed her eyes. This was a triumph. She had dared and she had won, but she had yet to see what the cost was.

  “Are you sure Amberline is all right?” she asked.

  “They tell me that she breathes, and that her heart beats,” Vandermay said. “More than that…”

  She put the food aside. She could eat more later.

  “I will see her now,” she said.

  “Are you sure you’re up to it, My Lady?” the Colonel asked.

  By way of reply she stood up. There was no dizziness, no weakness.

  “Show me the way.”

  Vandermay led her across the camp, which was in surprisingly good order. The biggest surprise was the river, which had not been there the night before, but now flowed alongside the king’s road southwards. She had expected it to fade when she let go but, apparently, she had created a permanent new river. She could not fail to notice the Wolfen, who had been waiting outside her tent, and now fell in behind her.

  Amberline’s tent was guarded. The guard raised the flap so they could enter and they did. The Abadonist was lying on a bed, eyes closed, breathing slow, deep breaths. She looked asleep. Sheyani put a hand on her forehead. It felt cool.

  “Time to wake up, Amberline.” She placed a hand either side of the Abadonist’s head and willed a portion of her strength to pass to the woman, just as Amberline had done the previous night.

  Amberline opened her eyes.

  “All is well,” Sheyani told her. “But it is time to move on.”

  Amberline tried to sit up, but fell back on the bed, clutching at her head. “Did someone put a nail through my skull?” she muttered.

  “Take your time,” Sheyani said. “The soldiers will bring you food and drink, and something for the pain. We all owe you a debt, Amberline. Without your help the camp would have burned.”

  “You did it, then? You raised a river?”

  “It’s still there. You’ll see it when you leave your tent.”

  Amberline shook her head. “It is a wonder. Sheyani Esh Baradan Al Dasham, you are truly the uncrowned queen of Durandar.”

  “I am a Farheim Lord serving the god-mage, and Duchess of Bas Erinor. That is quite enough.” She stepped out of the tent before Amberline could reply. She wanted no part of the Occult Throne. It had been her father’s and she had killed the man that took it from him, but that was where it ended. If the truth were told she did not greatly admire her own people. Many of them had abandoned their own country to yap like dogs round the god-mage’s heels. There were those who would level the same accusation against her, she knew, but her case was different. She owed life and loyalty to Pascha.

  She walked with Colonel Vandermay over to the mess tent. The soldiers had not yet begun to dismantle the camp, and she was anxious to be on the move again.

  “We should be on the road by now,” she said.

  “I’m waiting,” Vandermay told her. “Those men I sent out to look for any sign of horses should be back soon.”

  “You can’t really think there are any of Alwain’s men this far north?”

  “Now that we’re split from our horse, we’re vulnerable. One good cavalry charge on an unprotected column and we’d be finished. I’d rather reach Bas Erinor a couple of days late than not at all.”

  Sheyani pointed at the map. “Here. This is where we need to be, and the other regiments will be marching north to meet us. If what you say is true then they’ll be in just as much peril.”

  “Caution killed fewer men than haste,” Vandermay said. Sheyani recognised it as a Durander proverb. She was fond of quoting them at Cain. She nodded.

  “Very well, we will wait.”

  They didn’t wait long. The men the colonel had sent out came back looking grim. The officer in charge came straight to the mess tent. He saluted.

  “Well?” the colonel demanded.

  “The fires were deliberate,” the man said. “Started at three points with oil and wood, and we found sign of shod horses.”

  “How many?”

  “Not less than fifty, not more than a regiment. I’d guess a couple of hundred. We back tracked them to an abandoned camp – no more than two miles. It looks like they headed south.”

  Vandermay looked at the map. “They could be setting an ambush,” he said. He tapped the map. “Here, or here.”

  “Or they could be riding to attack the regiment marching to meet us,” Sheyani said.

  “We can’t disregard this,” the colonel said. “If they attack…”

  “Remember this,” Sheyani said. “These are not your troops. They are the Duke’s. If you preserve your men at the cost of Bas Erinor you will merely have postponed their deaths by a few months.”

  “The risk is great.”

  Lieutenant Quinifa, who had been standing quietly by the tent flap, stepped forwards.

  “May I speak?”

  “You have a suggestion?” the colonel asked.

  “Give me twenty archers and five of my men will go ahead of the column with them. We have ways of fighting cavalry.”

  “No. It would be suicide,” Vandermay said.

  Quinifa shook his head. “Our forefathers paid a heavy price every time they met cavalry, but the Wolfen embrace the new and we looked for ways to right every mistake they made. Before we became horse soldiers, we found a way to beat them. Trust me. Twenty archers and five of my men will be enough.”

  “That’s madness,” the colonel said. “Twenty archers against, what? Two hundred horse?”

  Sheyani looked at Quinifa, and the lieutenant wasn’t joking. He believed that five of his men and twenty archers could do the job. He had no doubt.

  “Colonel, do it.”

  The colonel stared at her. “Lady Sheyani, with all due respect, in military matters…”

  “You know more of fighting than I,” Sheyani conceded. “But I am a Halith Mage, and I see things in people that you cannot. Give this man twenty archers and send him ahead of you.”

  Vandermay’s face hardened. “My Lady, I do not trust magic.”

  “But I do, and I know far more of it than you. But think on this. Lieutenant Quinifa knows no magic, but I believe he has knowledge denied to you. You will do as I say.”

  It was the most direct challenge to Vandermay’s authority that she had yet attempted. He could still refuse her. She was not the Duke of Bas Erinor and held no rank. However, she was a century older than the colonel and had demonstrated her power. She was known to be a friend of the god mage, and the duke, the colonel’s commander, was her husband.

  For all that, she could be wrong. Quinifa was confident, but she had no idea what strategy he had to deal with cavalry or if it would work. The Wolfen, as far as she knew, had never fought in a battle.

  Vandermay turned to Quinifa.
r />   “How?” he asked. “How will so few men defeat a superior force of cavalry?”

  “It is a secret,” the lieutenant said. “But if the Lady Sheyani requires it I will show you.”

  Quinifa was doing two things. He was making it plain to Vandermay that the Wolfen were not under his command and at the same time putting Sheyani between a rock and a hard place.

  “Will showing convince the colonel?” she asked him.

  “No. We have no horses.”

  “We have those pulling the wagons.”

  “But we need those,” Quinifa said.

  Vandermay seemed to capitulate. “Very well,” he said. “I will call for volunteers.”

  “One more thing,” Quinifa said. “My orders are to protect the Lady Sheyani, so I will remain with her. The Wolfen who go will be commanded by my sergeant, and the archers must obey him. It is a matter of tactics when facing superior numbers. Disobedience could kill them all.”

  “I will see to it that they understand,” Vandermay said. He seemed more resigned to it than happy, but a short while later he came back and told them that, as expected, there had been no shortage of volunteers.

  The Wolfen sergeant and his four companions set off down the road with their contingent of archers while the rest of Vandermay’s men dismantled the camp. Sheyani and Amberline took their place on the leading wagon and, as the regiment began its southward march, they began to play.

  The land around the road flattened as they marched. The high ground to their left retreated and became rolling hills. The new-born river found its course away from the road, making new marshes of the pasture land.

  About an hour after they set off Vandermay’s horse dropped back and he rode alongside the wagon. He caught Sheyani’s eye and pointed up at the rolling horizon on the low hills. She looked, and felt a lurch of fear.

  Ten horsemen were threading their way along the tops, keeping pace with the matching column.

  “Watching us,” the colonel said. “I hope I haven’t sent those men to their deaths.”

  23 Defences

  Cain walked carefully round the perimeter of the field. They had chosen it knowing that Alwain, too, would choose it. It was a good place to camp. There was fresh water from one of the many rills that ran across the plain, and other paddocks nearby would accommodate those soldiers who could not find space here. This place, though, had a clear view of both gates. It was ideal.

  The Wolfen had buried dozens of their deadly flasks in five caches around the field, making certain that a horse or man, or even a wagon, passing over them would not set them off. They were under a good foot of earth and Captain Dantillia had proven his point by jumping up and down on one of the hidden pits in a display of confident bravado that made Cain wince. He’d seen what a single flask could do. It had taken them several hours to repair the damage to the road in front of the main gate.

  “It looks clean,” he said to Dantillia. “No reason why he wouldn’t camp here.”

  “There’s sign of digging.”

  “Others have camped here before. Could be a latrine pit. Besides, nobody’s ever seen your flasks before. There’s no reason to suspect.”

  “Spies?” Dantillia suggested. “Scouts? Anyone could have seen that demonstration we put on.”

  “Not many, though I’m sure stories are going round the city.” He turned to Catto. “What do you say, Sergeant? Heard any tales?”

  “Plenty, general, but most dismiss it as gossip. Frankly if I’d not seen it myself, I wouldn’t credit it.”

  “See? If Alwain hears it third hand he’ll ignore it.”

  “I hope so, My Lord.” Dantillia seemed less optimistic than Catto, but that was a good quality in a commander.

  “So. You’re ready?”

  “We are,” Dantillia agreed.

  “Then all we have to do is wait for Alwain. He’ll be here tomorrow or the day after.” He was missing the progress reports that Pascha sent to Caster. With the sword master away, he had to rely on less timely intelligence. The deposed duke was probably less than forty miles distant.

  They walked back to the main gates together.

  “May I ask you a question, My Lord?” Dantillia was unusually hesitant.

  “Of course.”

  “You must feel free to refuse me an answer, but I promised myself that, if I ever met you, I would ask it.”

  Cain’s curiosity was aroused. Was there a question he would refuse to answer? Private and personal ones, he supposed.

  “Why did you spare them at the White Road? Our records are very clear. Your victory was certain. Our forefathers were trapped, beaten, demoralised. You only had to give the order and they would have died. Why did you let them live?”

  Cain thought back. Whatever their records said it hadn’t been quite like that. Narak had burned the bulk of their army when he fired the Great Forest. The remnant had suffered fire again when he’d drawn them into a trap, and the remnant of the remnant had indeed been demoralised and beaten, but they could have fled at any time. It had been like shooting animals in a pen – they had simply lost their minds, clawed at the walls like wild beasts, and Cain had given his men the order to stop, to let them live. He’d told them to go home.

  “I let them live because I didn’t want to kill them,” he said.

  Dantillia shook his head. “But they were your enemies. They would not have thought to spare you had the positions been reversed.”

  “Think of it this way,” Cain said. “If you allow your enemy’s worst behaviour to become the yardstick of your own conduct, then what is the point of fighting him? I would have asked the same question when I was your age, Captain, but I came to realise that defeating your enemy is not the same thing as killing him. Saving him can be just as effective.”

  Dantillia stared at him. “That is… wise,” he said. “But foolish. How can saving your enemy be a victory?”

  “Perhaps, if you save his life, he will not be so much your enemy?”

  “It is a question of loyalty, My Lord,” Dantillia insisted. “Surely to spare your enemy is to betray your lord?”

  “Sometimes that is true, but I like to think that true loyalty is a shared belief in what is right. Neither the Wolf nor Duke Quinnial ever reprimanded me for showing mercy. If you did what you thought was right and I punished you, what would you think?”

  “That I was wrong?”

  Cain laughed. “That is one possibility. But it would also be possible that I had betrayed our shared belief – that I was wrong and simply demanded loyalty because some ancestor of mine had earned a title and yours had not. In that case would not the betrayal be mine?”

  Dantillia shook his head. “I will have to think about it, My Lord.”

  “Then think on this. I was born poor in the backstreets of Bas Erinor, and here I stand as its duke. The god mage and the Wolf are my friends. The kings of Telas call me uncle. I am married to a wise and powerful woman of royal blood. I am a Farheim Lord, and here you stand, the descendant of my enemy, prepared to die at my bidding. Did all this happen because I followed orders or simply through luck? Or perhaps it came about because when I see a man, I see a man – like me. Killing is sometimes necessary, Captain, but it is never desirable. Even today if I thought that I could persuade Alwain to abandon his claim to my title I would let him live. I would grant him a dignified and comfortable life because it would save a thousand men like you.”

  “He would not believe you,” Dantillia said.

  “True. So he must be defeated and thousands will die. I do not baulk at that, Captain, but I do regret it.”

  “Our forefathers were taught that if the cause is just, then any act is acceptable to achieve it.”

  “Do you believe that evil can serve good? I do not.”

  Dantillia was saved from answering by a messenger running out from the main gate.

  “Riders, My Lord. Riders at the River Gate!”

  Cain broke into a trot. They were still fifty paces shor
t of the main gate postern.

  “How many?” he asked.

  “Many. Hundreds. More than a regiment.”

  Once inside he borrowed a horse and rode hard through the centre of the city. It was only a mile between the two gates by the most direct route, but it took time. It had to be the northern regiments. Alwain would arrive at the main gate, he was sure. It was the natural entrance to Bas Erinor from the coast road. The northern regiments, on the other hand, would arrive at the river gate, coming as they did from the north.

  He dismounted just short of the gate. There were fifty men on the wall above it, and a conversation was taking place. He ran up the stairs and pushed himself through the soldiers to look down on the approach road.

  It was full of horses and mounted men. They stretched back to the thin forest half a mile back and filled the road four abreast.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  The men at the front of the column turned their gaze on him.

  “Are you the duke?” one of them called up.

  “I am Cain Arbak,” he replied.

  “Then we answer your call, My Lord. We are the horse of the Lords Blackwood, Yurdal and Umber. Lord Caster sends his regards and says that he will be joining us by a different road.”

  “Your numbers?” Cain asked.

  “Fifteen hundred, all told. Lord Kinray’s full regiment is no more than an hour behind with a thousand more.”

  Toranda had arrived the previous day. That made three and a half thousand with the infantry still to come. Now they could hold the city. Now, perhaps they could attack Alwain with more than exploding campsites when he arrived.

  “Open the gates,” he called down.

  The river gate was thrown open and the men poured through. Barracks were already prepared for them, and they were guided to their new lodgings by cheerful members of the Seventh Friend.

  Cain was still standing over the gate watching them pass beneath him when Dantillia touched him on the shoulder.

  “My Lord, to the west.”

  Cain looked. In the distance, on the coast road, he could see a small cavalry unit, about forty or fifty men by the look of it. They were not advancing, but simply sat in their saddles watching.