“What was that?” Thal exclaimed, glad he had not canceled his shield of silence.
Blakstar shrugged and took a few steps back down the passage and found the way back blocked.
“I think your orthek brought down the cliffs,” he said as he returned, “blocking the way back.” The kortexi stopped, looking up the ice tunnel, noticing light coming from somewhere ahead. “Where did the thief get to?”
The others looked up the tunnel. “He probably went scouting ahead,” Klaybear replied.
“Yes,” Thal added, “since he saw himself outmatched by the ice creatures.” He chuckled, and Blakstar joined him. The kortexi turned and started to climb the sloping tunnel; Thal and Klaybear followed, and the light grew brighter.
Blakstar stopped and turned back, reaching up to fold the narrow flap over his eyes down, covering the slit in the hood for his eyes. “Better put your visor down,” he noted, “since it looks like we are moving out into the open. The light reflecting off the snow can blind a person, if he looks at it for only a few seconds without the visor.” Thal and Klaybear imitated Blakstar’s action, and discovered they could still see the outlines of the tunnel, and as they got closer to the surface and the light grew more intense, they could see clearly the opening onto the surface, and the awemi standing in the opening without his visor down, eyes wide, but seeing nothing.
Chapter 14
Each seklesi squad consists of two squad leaders, two kailum, two maghem, and four each of scouts, swords, and shields, all ranked according to ability and experience. Each company is made of ten of these squads and a command squad consisting of two of each type–leaders, named captains, kailum, maghem, scouts, swords, and shields–plus a messenger and quartermaster. Each legion contains ten companies and a command squad with two messengers and a quartermaster who oversees a quartet of quartermasters responsible for the supplies of the entire legion. . . .
from The Higher Orders, written by order of the Fereghen, atno 1739
Marilee gathered her squad and prepared to move forward, following the orders conveyed by the company’s messenger, instructing them to attack the enemy from the right flank. She set them all jogging forward, following the squads of the Eighth Company around her under the same orders. The front of the seklesi army was trying to contain the enemy within the pass, but several companies of purem and ghelem had broken out to the sides, attempting to flank the seklesem’s forward positions and cut-off support from the rear, in an effort to kill or capture their leaders. As the Seventh and Eighth Companies jogged forward, many of the seklesem wondered why the aperum had made straight for the eighth squad’s position. They had all witnessed the strange behavior of the aperum, flying over their forces, almost as if they were looking for that squad. Even more astonishing was the behavior of the newest member of the eighth squad, although few knew his name, many had witnessed his singlehanded killing of two aperum; rumors sailed among the ranks, the most common being that this new seklesi had been trained separately and secretly from the rest of them as a “secret weapon” against Gar.
Marilee had a fairly shrewd idea of why the aperum had attacked her squad, but neither she, nor Delgart, mentioned their suspicions. She wondered how Gar’s forces had known that she and Delgart would be here, and how the aperum had picked two chosen out of the entire army. Both kept the marked halves of their faces hidden, precisely so they would not draw attention to themselves. She was furious at Delgart for his actions, but she also recognized that many seklesem would have died, had he not acted, in their attempts to bring down the aperum, and it would have taken them a lot of time, time that the enemy could have used to flank and cut-off the forward positions and capture or kill their leaders, including the Fereghen, who led from the center position just behind the vanguard. She wondered what would happen when her squad, more particularly, herself and Delgart, engaged the enemy ahead. She did not have long to wait, as the Eighth Company was coming up to edges of their enemy’s flanking forces, easily cutting down the scattered stragglers who had left the main group.
“Archers,” Marilee shouted, hearing the same call echoing around her, responding to a signal from their captain, riding ahead of them, then she added, “prepare to loose.” She kept her eyes on their captain, saw her raised arm move forward, and issued the command, hearing it repeated around her. “Loose!” she exclaimed. She heard the twangs and the hissing of the arrows as they flew in a high arc toward the purem and ghelem ahead, so intent on their maneuver that they had not noticed the seklesi companies approaching from the south and their left flank. Marilee knew that an error like that could cost them the battle. She saw the flank of the enemy crumble, heard the shouted commands, saw her captain signal again, and issued another command to the archers. “Loose at will,” she shouted, hearing the same command repeated around her.
The enemy ahead was turning to meet them. “Shields ready,” Marilee shouted, as the distance between them shrank to about a hundred yards. The captain signaled. “Wedge and swords!” Marilee shouted in response to her captain’s signal. Her squad shifted around her, the archers slinging bows onto their backs, taking out shields and swords. The captain signaled again, and Marilee shouted, along with the other nine squad leaders. “Attack speed!” They ran forward, crashing into the ranks of purem and ghelem before the enemy had time to get set. Her squad, to the right flank and in the third rank, crashed into a company of ghelem, still trying to turn and meet them. The shields in front of her swung swords right and left, killing ghelem with ease. The shields allowed a few to slip past, giving Grelsor, to her right, and Lidelle, to her left, targets to attack with both mace and staff. Hrelga and Luthina, her squad’s maghem, right behind her and the two kailum, shot arrows of ice to the squad’s sides and rear, killing any ghelem that escaped the swath of death her squad created among the company of ghelem. The company of ghelem, being the least of Gar’s creatures and creations, seeing themselves overcome so quickly and easily, broke for the mountains to their north. “Archers!” Marilee shouted on the signal from their captain, “loose at will against the ghelem. Squad left!” Her squad’s archers swapped weapons while the entire squad turned, following the other squads toward the pass and the front of their army. Marilee looked to her left after they turned and saw the Ninth Company coming up behind them to follow the fleeing ghelem into the mountains. She looked to her right and saw Delgart swinging his sword and cutting down any enemy coming near his side. Still amazed by his prowess, she wondered where he would have been in their ranks had he come to them at the normal age. She looked back to her captain, saw the signal to slow, and shouted the order, hearing other squad leaders echo her command.
They topped a rise in the terrain, looking down toward the pass’s entrance and the heaviest fighting. Most of the enemy on this flank were destroyed and fleeing back toward the pass, although there were still several companies of purem between them and the pass. The captain signaled they stop, and she issued the order, knowing they were halting to determine their next move. To their right, they could see the pass choked with purem and ghelem, and several companies of wedaterem, tall, blue-skinned, hairless, wielding huge clubs. Following them, further up the pass, Marilee thought she could see ranks of nekerpum, animated corpses and some of the worst of Gar’s forces, raised and controlled by purgle. She immediately recognized their predicament. Their captain signaled, and Marilee turned to Rellik.
“Take over and hold here,” Marilee said, “the captain wants to meet with us.”
Rellik nodded once, stepping up to take her place. Marilee jogged toward the captain, following the other nine squad leaders.
“Have you seen?” the captain asked as they gathered around her. The captain of the Eighth Company was a tall wetha with a regal face beneath her straight, black, and short-bobbed hair.
They nodded. “We could cut our way through,” a tall thin, dark-haired leader of the first squad noted, “but it would take many days, and I do not think Shigmar can hold out that l
ong.”
The stocky, brown-haired leader of the second squad spoke next. “We would suffer huge losses in the attempt,” she said, “and I fear we would not have the strength to repel the enemy attacking the kailum.”
The youngest leader, of the tenth squad, a female of medium height and golden hair, looking too pretty to be a warrior, asked: “Is there no other way to approach the city?”
“There is a trail through the mountains to the west and north, on the other side of the river,” the captain noted, “but we would still have to cross the last part of the pass, just southeast of Shigmar, and that would place us in the middle of two armies, I fear,” she finished, looking to the north.
“Captain,” Marilee heard herself saying, “there is another way into Shigmar.”
All the leaders’ eyes fell on her.
“What way?” the captain asked.
“It is a closely kept secret of the kailu masters,” she went on, “but there is an entrance into the sewers beneath the city.”
“Surely not,” objected the first squad leader, “that is only a legend.”
“Two days ago,” Marilee said, “when I was in Shigmar, I walked out of that legend and looked on the head of the falls of the Krystal River. My newest shield, Delgart, was with me and can vouch for me.”
The captain looked down at her messenger. “Go to the eighth squad and bring Shield Delgart to us.”
The messenger scurried off, returning half-a-minute later with Delgart in tow.
“Can you vouch for your squad leader’s claim of an entrance into the sewers of Shigmar near the falls of the Krystal River?” the captain asked Delgart.
Delgart nodded, using the nod as an opportunity to shoot a glance at Marilee.
“What were you doing in the sewers?” the leader of the second squad asked, looking first at Delgart, then at Marilee.
Delgart could not cover the glance that he and Marilee exchanged, but he could tell that Marilee was at a loss to explain their presence in the sewers. The truth would force them to reveal what had happened to them, especially the marks upon their faces. Having experienced firsthand the response of the kailum to the ways they had been marked, and the way it had been glossed over by their seklesem leaders, he knew he must alter the facts to keep the true reason for their presence in the sewers hidden. He lowered his voice. “The kailu Headmaster, Myron, was trying to smuggle us out of the city. Are you aware, captain, of the illness that afflicted both of us?”
His words touched something in their captain; she nodded.
“There were questions about both our illness and the manner of our healing,” Delgart went on, “that the Headmaster wanted to keep secret, believing the time not right for their general revelation. I can only say that we were healed by a special elixir that was only in the possession of the first kortexi, Sir Karble, but has re-emerged in the hands of a new kortexi, who also carries the original sword of Sir Karble.”
Several of the older squad leaders, including the captain, recognized what Delgart was telling them, and their eyes widened.
“That was how we were able,” Delgart continued, “to travel so quickly from Shigmar to Holvar, although we stood looking at the waterfall this side of Shigmar the day before yesterday.”
Marilee glanced once at Delgart, thinking he had gone too far. “There is a problem with this entrance,” she said, trying to divert them back to their immediate problem, “there was a narrow trail along the face of the cliff, but part of it has fallen away, so we would either have to bridge that section somehow, or maybe build scaling ladders to climb the face of the cliff to the ledge that leads into the sewers. There is a locked gate, but I think we could get past that, if we can get up to it.”
“I will pass this information onto our legion commander,” the captain said, cutting off further discussion, “in the meantime we should fight our way toward the center below; the vanguard has been pushed back into the legion surrounding the Fereghen by a company of wedaterem along with a squad each of megatrem and krugle. They must be dealt with before any other plans can be made.”
The captain waved her arm dismissing them, turned, then raised her arm and signaled the squads to get ready to move. Marilee turned and jogged back to her squad, not speaking to Delgart for fear of being overheard. Delgart recognized her silence, so he did not speak until they neared their squad.
“That was some story,” Marilee whispered, slowing to a walk.
“Why did you tell them about the sewer entrance?” Delgart asked. “Didn’t you realize that it would lead to the awkward questions they asked?”
“I did,” Marilee said, “and I have no idea why I told them about it. Something took over at that point and spoke the words before I could stop myself.”
Delgart looked at her for a moment before speaking and smiled. “Then I guess you now understand why I attacked the aperum.”
“I . . . ,” she began, her mouth falling open, but she could not say anything.
“Being chosen,” he whispered more softly than before, “is more problematic than we thought. Wasn’t there something in the prophecy about this,” he asked, “that we would cause things to happen, merely by being present?”
Marilee could not answer, as they had reached their squad. “Ready?” she asked Rellik as Delgart moved back to his position.
“Ready,” Rellik replied, moving back to his place.
Marilee raised her hand in a fist, signaling the captain her squad’s readiness; a few moments later, the captain signaled they move, and after they started forward, signaled that the archers prepare to loose on the purem just below and ahead of them. Several other companies from their legion, the Third, were already engaged below and to Marilee’s left. Their captain signaled the archers loose arrows at will, and Marilee issued the command. Fewer of the purem ahead crumbled, compared to the ghelem they had just scattered, being better protected, but their arrow storm had the effect of turning the nearest company of purem to face them and offer its own volley.
“Shields up!” Marilee commanded, and the same order echoed around her. The archers in her squad loosed another arrow each, then her squad tightened around her as shields were raised overhead. To her right and left, Grelsor and Lidelle raised their staves through the roof of shields and barked in unison, “aterskoit!” There was a flash of red flames overhead, and Marilee knew that any purem arrows that fell on her squad would be consumed by the flaming shield the kailum had erected over their heads. A crackling sound overhead indicated that the arrows had struck the kailu shield. “Wedge and shields!” Marilee commanded, as they were nearly upon the company of purem. Aranik, second shield, stumbled and fell, clutching the bolt sticking out of his thigh, his dark, curly hair looking as wild as his face. Marilee vaulted over him, saw Hranda and Delgart shift left to take his place. “Heavy archers!” she shouted. Lidelle left her side to help the fallen shield.
“Ahead and right!” Mitha, the tall and sinewy second sword, shouted; she had a white scar running along her jawline, right side of her face.
“Orthek!” Marilee shouted as her front rank crashed into the purem, cutting them down but slowing their forward progress.
“Wedro-pleugikel!” Hrelga and Luthina shouted in unison from behind her. A sphere of blue light flew forward and exploded at the center of the squad of heavy archers. Fragments of the sphere became many ice arrows that ripped apart the squad of heavy archers; only a few remained standing, although severely wounded. Marilee looked left to their company captain and saw her falling from her horse, hit by one of the last bolts of the heavy archers. She looked back at her front line, and saw that fourth sword Peltha had also been hit by the heavy archers; Rolva pulled her back and took her place, as Lidelle came back. Marilee swung her sword at the puri Peltha had been fighting, neatly removing his sword arm. Rolva lunged forward, taking the opening provided, stabbing the puri’s chest. Ice arrows shot past her, bringing down the last of the heavy archers. To her right, she saw that Delgart
had slung his shield onto his back and picked up another saber from one of the fallen puri, and he was a blur of whirling blades that cut down any puri that came within reach of either arm. Marilee watched him for a moment, amazed at the effectiveness of his actions. Beside her, Grelsor and Lidelle alternated between crushing puri skulls and healing the wounds the shields received as they fought their way forward. Marilee moved forward to aid the left side of her squad, as the right side, solely on the basis of Delgart, was moving ahead of them. This brought her squad into the front rank of her company, and a clearer view of the battle below.
The Redemption, Volume 1 Page 55