by Chris Bunch
I hoped that it was more, that these men and women’s spirits, even though most of them must’ve gone back to the Wheel years ago, were able to feel a bit of merriment, pleasure, far distant in their new selves.
Magic it was, but I mean more than just wizardry, for the spectacle held 200-odd dirty soldiers bound, watching another time, before war, before hatred, enjoy itself.
Then the spell was broken … just a bit … as a soldier I recognized as one of the army’s prized clowns got up, bowed to another private, and they swung onto the dance floor, dancing not well but enthusiastically. Laughter grew, and I was smiling, too. The illusion may have been spoiled, but I didn’t miss the loss — if my men were cheery enough to joke, that was a good sign.
Svalbard rose, went onto the floor, and began dancing by himself. His eyes were half-closed, and his thoughts were I know not where. The huge man moved gracefully, as if he’d been a professional dancer at one time, in elaborate arabesques.
I wondered where he’d learned to dance so well, realized he’d probably never tell me.
I looked at Cymea, and she was smiling, also in her own world. She noticed my attention and leaned closer.
“You know,” she whispered. “I never learned how to dance.”
“Really?”
“I suppose my father thought there were other things more important,” she said. “I suppose there were,” and there was a tinge of bitterness in her voice.
“Perhaps,” I said, “when the war is over, you would allow me to help you learn?”
She blinked, then smiled, and her smile was the dawning sun.
“Perhaps,” she said.
A thought came … what if I would ask her now? Here? Absurd. Commanders did not involve themselves with their underlings, particularly if that underling happened to be a murderous woman whose fellows had … had done what they did.
Who would think ill of me if I did?
Would Cymea refuse?
My mind was whirling like a boy at his first fete.
I don’t know what I would have done, but suddenly the officer of the guard burst in. He goggled at what was going on, saw his commanding officer, hurried to him.
Cymea gestured three times, and the illusion was gone, and there was silence except for the whine of the wind and drip of the rain, and the ruined pavilion was lit only by a scattering of candles.
The officer crossed to me.
“Riders,” he said. “A patrol coming up the road toward us.”
“Turn to,” I ordered, and the magic was forgotten as men pulled on battle harness and readied their weapons. A second man came into the room.
“They’ve turned away,” he reported. “Gone back to the main road.”
We relaxed again, but Cymea made no move to re-create her fantasy.
I went out into the darkness, made my toilet, sluiced water on my face from a cistern, brushed my teeth, then came back and laid out my canvas strip with a blanket inside.
Cymea had spread her blankets not far away, and in a few minutes she came back, her face shiny and wet.
“It’s cold out there,” she said.
“It felt good,” I said.
She pulled her boots off and slid into her bedroll. None of us undressed any further than that. She loosened her sword in its sheath beside her, lay back.
One by one, the candles were blown out, and silence grew through the grunts and low murmur of voices.
“That was nice,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for thinking of it,” she answered. “Good night.”
I slept well until I was roused, as I ordered, two hours before dawn, and my dreams weren’t of war or death.
• • •
We took advantage of the still-pouring rain, stripped off our uniforms, such as they were, washed, and put on the new garb my sewers had labored at in secret. We now wore pants and tunics of a light brown like many of the Maisirian units, and I’d had Maisirian banners for our guidon bearers made from memory.
I’d wondered if I should restrict my 231 men to one side of the pavilion, and the 232nd, Cymea, to the other, but she solved the problem for me by nonchalantly stripping off with the others and pretending she didn’t see the interested looks she got.
It worked well — her casualness shamed even the most lascivious into silence, although I’m sure many thought of her slender, small-breasted body at night. Perhaps I was one of them.
Re-uniformed, we ate hastily, mounted, and rode on. In our new garb we’d be subject to instant execution as spies or partisans, but no one cared. The Maisirians were careless about taking prisoners, with a captive’s best hope being sold into slavery. Knowing this, our army had become equally brutal.
In our retreat, Kutulu had acquired a set of large-scale maps of the Latane River, from Nicias to Renan, so I wasn’t navigating blindly as we rode carefully south.
A day later, we saw the first Maisirians. They noted our banners, waved or ignored us, and kept about their business, which was either unauthorized looting or authorized procurement for their commissaries, which is a difference it takes the keenest to determine.
A few were the dark-armored Negaret, frontier guardians, nomads. I’d ridden with one tribe of them when I first went to Maisir as the emperor’s false peace envoy. They were near-bandits, brave when it suited them, cowardly when survival dictated, and in spite of their sometimes-barbaric ways, I’d loved the time and sometimes thought wistfully of leading such a life myself, without anything to hold me to one place, losing myself in their rather mindless ways of hunting, riding, and sport.
I wasn’t worried about being ambushed — no one in his right mind would imagine this small a body of Numantian soldiers close to the Maisirian lines. Plus I had Kutulu’s men in front, screening, then cavalry vedettes at every vantage point. Cymea’s magic scanned for unpleasant surprises, and she had a continuing skein of spells around us, so one of the Maisirian War Magicians could “look” at us and hopefully find nothing of his concern.
The next day, only a dozen leagues outside Renan, two of Kutulu’s men said they’d found the Maisirians’ camp. I rode forward with them, over rolling foothills, taking only Svalbard and Cymea.
The main scout, Kutulu’s prized bodyguard Elfric, led us on a sheep track that wound up a commanding bluff. We tethered our horses below the crest, went on foot to the top.
Spread blow, across a wide valley with a river running through it were the Maisirians. I counted at least twenty individual camps separated by farmland and assumed King Bairan had told them off by divisions. There were at least a million men, their tents and crude huts stretched as far as I could see.
We lay on our bellies in the muck while I considered what I’d do next. It was cold, and then rain began pattering. Fortunately, none of us could get any wetter, so it was just another bit of misery.
Cymea crawled up beside me. “I’ve an idea,” she whispered. I asked about it, also in a low tone, which was absurd, since the nearest Maisirian was far distant, half a league or more. But fear brings its own logic.
She said she thought she could cast a spell like the Seeing Bowl. I said that spell was far too dangerous, and I’d have to assume Bairan’s magicians would be overwatching the camp. Cymea said she thought she had a new way of casting, using a puddle of water and the rain, that would be far subtler and harder to discover.
Reluctantly, I told her to go ahead.
She used no brazier, no fire, but ran her fingers across the tiny pool again and again, as if writing invisibly. She muttered her spell in a monotone, over and over. I was starting to yawn in boredom, in spite of my unease.
The water seethed, turned translucent, then we were high above the Maisirian camp. I had Svalbard hold his cloak over the map, which I oriented to the picture.
“Can we get closer?”
“We can do anything you need,” she said. “Closer, or showing you bits of the camp … whatever you wish.”
I took writing implements
from my bags, and as Cymea sent her “eye” skittering around the valley, made rapid notes. Here was their front line, here the secondary, here were their reserves, there mess tents and quartermasters, supply dumps here, here. I tried not to stare too long into the puddle — its swoops and dips were unsettling to the stomach, and I lost any desire I’d had to return from the Wheel as a bird.
I noted something interesting. The Maisirians had burned or torn apart most of the valley’s buildings, and the few standing had likely been commandeered for officers’ lodgings or unit headquarters. But to the rear of the camp was a great estate, whose fields of autumn wheat stood tall; vineyards with the vines dry and sere but unscathed; fruit trees not violated; and the estate’s buildings white, rich, and palatial.
“Can you close on that?” I asked. “It looks like something important.”
“Very carefully. It also looks like it might have wards set.” The estate grew larger in the pool. Cymea sent her “eye” spreading over it.
“Still clear,” she said. “I’ll come back more slowly.”
Guards posted … smart-looking … but they weren’t that alert, as if there wasn’t any particular reason to be watchful right now. There was only a handful of horses here and there and not that many men about. The main house had a dozen chimneys, but only two were smoking.
“Vacant?” I wondered. “Who lives there now?”
I looked at the map, and it showed the estate, but with no legend to give a clue.
“I sense something,” Cymea said, after about an hour. “Something coming.”
“Move away from the mansion,” I ordered. “And get ready to kill the illusion.”
She gathered a handful of mud, whispered into her fist.
“I sense something coming toward that big house,” she said. “I’ll use the rain to turn the view toward it.”
The image swung, and we were looking west. If it’d been clear, we should have been able to see the outskirts of Renan.
There was motion, and without orders Cymea closed on it. I had an instant to see a regiment of Maisirian cavalry in dress uniform, with carriages and banners behind, then mud splashed into the pool and all vanished.
“Somebody,” Cymea said hastily, breath coming fast, “had a counterspell out, and I felt suspicion, as if our presence had been sensed.”
What … or rather who … those cavalrymen guarded came in a flash. The king was coming. Bairan would’ve taken over a mansion in Renan for his usual quarters, no more interested in sharing the mud with his common foot soldiers than any other Maisirian lord, especially in the winter, and he used this estate as his headquarters when he visited his army.
A notion came, was discarded as absurd.
I’d seen enough. Now I was ready to remind Bairan that Numantians did more than flee or make obeisance.
• • •
The first order was to find a haven, close enough to the Maisirian camp so we could chivvy them easily, far enough away so we wouldn’t be discovered.
I’d gone over the map, looking for a nicely dense forest we could bury ourselves in, something with great thickets no casual enemy scout would bother pushing through. Two places suggested themselves, but one was a bit far away from the Maisirian camps, the other too close to the river and Renan.
I found an interesting dot on the map and sent Kutulu and Elfric to investigate it.
They came back with good news. The dot was a ruined castle, built on a crag that jutted up from the valley floor. A winding dirt road led from the nearest village, almost a league distant, to the gate. They had ridden around the castle, seen a twisting path at the rear that would serve as an escape route if we were discovered.
Still better, they’d stopped a farmer and asked him about the place. Shaking in terror, sure these Maisirians were about to rip him apart, he quavered answers. The castle hadn’t been lived in for … for as long as he and his father and his father had been alive. Longer, for no one knew who’d lived there or how long ago. All everyone knew was the castle was demon haunted. How did they know this? Had any of them investigated? No one, not even the most foolhardy village boy, dared approach it, by day or night. Then how did they know it was haunted?
The farmer looked perplexed, Kutulu told me, sounding amused, then said “everybody just knew.”
Very, very good. If “everybody knew” the castle was haunted, no one would think whatever lights we showed were anything but supernatural, and the Maisirians, even more superstitious than our most craven peasant, would stay well clear.
I asked Kutulu if they’d taken a look inside.
Kutulu looked suddenly uncomfortable, and Elfric wouldn’t meet my eyes. No, they hadn’t. Why not? Well, they wanted to get the word back as quickly as possible.
“ ‘Sides,” Elfric rumbled. “There is some’at strange about those walls.”
I dismissed him, poured Kutulu a bit of a sweet yellow wine from Dara that I’d discovered he fancied. He sipped at it once, twice, which was as much as draining a flagon for the spymaster.
“Getting superstitious?” I asked.
Kutulu grimaced. “No. Or at any rate, I don’t think so. But …”
“But what?”
“Never mind. I’ll go back tomorrow morning and go through the damned place top to bottom.” For some reason, he sounded a bit angry.
“Never mind,” I said. “We don’t have that much time. We’ll move this afternoon and be inside it by nightfall.”
I gave orders to break camp, then called Cymea, told her about the two men’s discomfort.
“Kutulu?” she said in disbelief. “Afraid of something?”
“I don’t know if afraid’s the right word … but something about that place bothers him.”
“Perhaps,” she said thoughtfully, “we might walk carefully when we approach. And you, I, your great thug, and a scattering of other muscle-bound sorts might reconnoiter before we wander inside with our slippers in our hand looking for the guest bedroom?”
I thought that an excellent idea, and so Curti, Svalbard, myself, Kutulu, and Lasleigh’s cavalry rode out within the hour, the rest of the force not far behind.
The castle was only two hours’ ride distant, and by midafternoon we’d skirted the village and were at the base of the road leading up to it.
One look, and I understood Elfric and Kutulu’s hesitation. The castle, if that was what it should be called, was weird. At first, I thought it had been a single very high round tower whose upper-works had been smashed by time, the elements, or a conqueror, but as we rode closer, I realized the tower was not that ruined, that it had been conceived as a low, squat cylinder. It was as strange a building as I’d ever seen.
There had been no moat, but the gaping main entrance was on a second floor. A stone ramp and rollers lay overturned to one side, which we could hitch horses to and drag back in place. We tethered our mounts, and Curti and I went hand-over-hand up the rough stones to the portal. I tossed a knotted rope down, and the others swarmed up, and we went inside.
Our footsteps echoed on the ancient stone, and as we entered the courtyard, a scatter of pigeons scrawked alarm, and my sword was in my hand as the birds fluttered away through the open roof.
I was sheepish, until I noted that everyone except Cymea also had drawn steel. She had a wand in hand, and her eyes were wide, as if she’d sensed something.
I drew a question mark in the air, she shook her head, and we continued. Ramps in the walls, not stairs, led upward, and as we went, things grew stranger and stranger.
We came across stone tables, benches, badly worn, some tapestries whose detail I couldn’t make out that turned to dust when I touched them. Cymea found a bit of a scroll, said a spell over it, and was able to unroll it. The words, if words they were, were in no language I’d seen, nor did they look as if man’s logic had any part in their construct, one “letter” being a handspan tall, and next to it others not as large as Cymea’s fingernail. She, too, shook her head in ignorance.
There was room enough for many men, the rooms being set into the thick outer walls. They were small and somehow wrong in their proportions, ceilings low enough to make me duck my head, but they were very wide, perhaps thirty feet by twenty.
The top floor was broken away and open to the heavens, looking down on the valley below, but its flooring was sturdy enough yet for guards to make their rounds.
We went back down to the courtyard and found a ringbolted hatch to one side.
“Is it safe?”
“I … think so,” Cymea said. “But be wary.” Svalbard and I lifted hard, stumbled back as the hatch came up as if it were counterbalanced. There was a ramp leading down. A terrible smell rolled up, and we gagged. “I do not like this,” I said.
“I still feel no immediate threat,” Cymea said. “But we can abandon this building and sleep around the walls. Or find another hiding place entirely.”
“No,” I decided. “This place is otherwise perfect. Let’s see what’s below.”
We took bits of ensorcelled wood from our packs, struck sparks, and they grew into full-size tapers, fire sputtering from their tip. We went down into darkness.
There was a center room, with corridors spidering out. At intervals, there were barred doors, a small spy hole in each one.
“Dungeon,” Svalbard guessed. It made sense. Curti lifted the balk on one, opened it, held high his torch.
There were bones on the inside, as if a prisoner had been abandoned when the castle was vacated. But these bones, moldered by the centuries, had belonged to nothing human.
My skin crawled, but we went on. All of the corridors dead-ended against the outer walls but one, and at that one was a doorway, this with four stone balks barring it, and a strange symbol carved into the stone.
I remembered another demon, who’d lived in the depths below another ancient castle, and how Tenedos’s spell had brought it ravening forth. I didn’t need Cymea’s warning to leave that door blocked and was glad to go up into the dying light.