by Chris Bunch
Lasleigh was standing in the courtyard entrance, so the rest of my troops had arrived.
I drew Cymea to one side. “Well?”
“I do not greatly like this place,” she said. “Something terrible happened a very long time ago, and there’s a great sadness. I feel no echo of man here, as if this tower’s builders were not human.”
“Demons?”
“I’ve never heard of demons requiring housing,” she said, trying to make light.
“So we should leave?”
“It’s your option. But I still don’t feel threatened. But I’ve never been anywhere that felt so dead, as if it’d died a thousand thousand years ago and still kept on dying.” She shook her head. “I know, that doesn’t make sense.”
I was most reluctant, but the day was growing late. One night could not hurt.
I supervised moving the ramp into place, and it slid easily, as if it were as light as pumice, but very strong. I watched the horses and mules carefully as we led them inside, for I’ve a belief animals can sense things, even the supernatural, better than man. But none of the beasts appeared nervous, and they seemed quite happy to be out of the dank.
I assembled the men, told them to take rooms by four-man fighting sections. I had guards told off and sent those who wished to wash back down the road about a third of a league to a creek. Other men I detailed to find dry wood for our cooking fires.
We cooked and ate, and then I called them together again.
“None of you have been told what you volunteered for, but it doesn’t take the brains of a recruit to know we’re here after some Maisirian hide. I want to hit the bastards here, there, and everywhere. Piss them off, make them afraid, then get the hells out of here.
“I want them to be like a man who’s stumbling through a forest, bitten by bugs, slashed by berry bushes, stumbling over vines, half-mad, not thinking right.
“When the weather changes, they’ll be marching north, toward us, toward Nicias, like that man in the forest. When they reach us in Kallio, we’ll have set them up for the kill.
“Any of you ever see an owl that grabs a nice rabbit just at dawn and goes to a perch to enjoy his feast? Then a bunch of crows see him and start picking at him, picking here, there, until he’s in a frenzy. Pretty soon he says the hells with this gods-damned rabbit and takes off for the deep forest, while the crows dine well.”
There was some laughter.
“We’re crows, and the Maisirians are the owl. We want their ass … I mean, their rabbit.”
I waited until the laughter faded.
“But remember something else. Every now and then, a crow gets too bold, and the owl rips his throat out.” Silence dropped like a weighted curtain.
“You understand me well,” I said. “Don’t fuck up and become that crow. Or make me into that crow. We’re here to help some other sorry bastard die for his country, not us.
“Now, go to your rooms. Tomorrow is make and mend. Get your weapons cleaned, check your mounts, get some sleep, and be ready to move when ordered.
“When we go out, I want us to get more gods-damned rabbits than you’ve ever seen!”
I set a heavy watch, less because I was worried about intruders than this castle itself.
Kutulu had the room next to me, Cymea next to him. Svalbard and Curti insisted on sleeping outside my room, in spite of my telling them to find a room of their own because there was nothing to worry about.
I spent an hour going over the map, forming my plan for the morrow. I thought it good and found myself most sleepy. I still felt uncomfortable, but not endangered, more as if I was spending the night in the home of someone I disliked, but who was neither my friend nor my enemy … yet.
I wrapped myself in my blankets on the stone floor, cold but not as cold as the mud we’d been sleeping in, blew out the candles, and went to sleep instantly.
I dreamed, and my dream was strange.
I was not a god, not a demon, nor human either. I had great powers and could manipulate the nature of matter itself. I was beyond good, beyond evil, and so offended greater powers, greater beings.
I was exiled, with those many beings who were connected to me, not quite family, but more than friends, to a far-distant world, where everything was hideous, strange, green.
I built this tower and continued my studies, cast my spells. I needed servitors, and so created, or perhaps brought from another place, smaller beings, pale, hideous to look at, pathetic in being locked into one shape for their brief existence.
Time passed, and once more I lusted for power. I reached out to the old realms, conspired, used all for my own ends, even those around me.
I was struck down from behind, by someone I trusted. As I lay dying I realized I’d used all my powers for nothing, trying to grasp at something that didn’t matter, and given up what did, and then I died.
I was laid to rest in the bowels of this tower, and the others like me escaped or were taken back to whatever we had come from, while those horrible beings who’d served us fled into the wilds.
I was dead, but still lay dying for aeons, alone on this alien world, and I came awake, guts wrenching in sorrow.
I sat, shaken for a time, then dressed, strapped on my sword, and went out. Curti was half-dozing against a wall, and his eyes snapped open.
“Stay here,” I said, trying to sound calm. “I’m just going out for air.”
I went up to the roof. It was chill and overcast, but at least the rain had stopped.
The sentries saluted. I returned their salutes but didn’t speak, gazing out at the blackness of the lands around, only a tiny light here and there at this late hour, then noticed someone else, huddled against one wall.
It was Cymea. I tried to greet her cheerily, not wanting anyone, this close to battle, to notice my illogical upset, then saw that she’d been crying.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Never mind. I’m being silly.”
I waited.
“I just had a stupid, stupid dream.”
“So did I.”
“About this place?”
“Yes,” I said. “Tell me about it.”
I’ve never believed dreams mean anything much, so’ve always been bored by those who insist on talking about them and their supposed significance. But I obeyed Cymea. As I spoke, I saw her nodding.
“You had the same dream?”
“Almost exactly,” she said.
“This place,” I said. “This was where the … hells, I don’t know what he was … this was what he built?”
“I think so.”
“So how old is it?”
“How old could it be?” she responded. “Older, I think.”
I shudder, then another thought came, even worse.
“Those little creatures he … it … created or called up. Were those supposed to be us? Is that where we came from?”
“I don’t know,” Cymea said. “I hope not.”
“Abandoned flunkies for a degenerate god,” I said, finding it almost funny. “So there’s no Umar the Creator, no Irisu the Preserver, no Saionji?”
“Don’t be sure of that,” she said. “Maybe our wizard, our demon … if he even existed … was one of those we call gods.”
“I think I know a way we could find out,” I said.
“You mean open that crypt? No, Damastes. I think that might drive me mad.”
“Good. As the saying goes, I’m mad, but I’m hardly crazy.”
We stood in silence for a time, letting the cold night wind blow across our faces, and slowly the sadness ebbed.
“Maybe,” Cymea said, “that dream was worse, harder for me than it was for you.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m from a magician’s loins,” she said, bitterly. “I can feel what that creature thought. I know what price sorcerous power exacts. And what people are willing to do to gain it.”
“You mean,” I said, choosing my words very carefully, “the way
your father, Landgrave Amboina, conspired against Tenedos?”
Her lips twisted. “You think conspiracy is the worst sin magicians contemplate, when they’re clawing for omnipotence? Damastes, you are a very naive man.”
She whirled, almost ran to the ramp, and disappeared.
No, I could have replied, I know there are far worse, at least in my eyes. Tenedos was willing to betray whatever ideals he’d had at one time, his country, and his people to satisfy the blood-drinking demon he thought his servant, the one he actually served.
Somehow I didn’t think that was what Cymea meant. I wondered if she’d ever tell me, then wondered if I really wanted to know.
• • •
We carefully reconnoitered the Maisirian positions. First Cymea used sorcery, then I sent out skirmishers, with orders to avoid contact at all costs, and little by little, I filled in details on my map.
As Amboina had promised, there were Tovieti in the district, farmers, shopkeepers, some caravan masters, and their drovers. Cymea summoned them, refusing to tell me how, but daily men and women slipped up the road to the tower, and she and Kutulu talked to them, slowly building a complete picture of everything in and around Renan.
Then it was time to strike.
• • •
I planned the first attack to hit the hardest. The Maisirians didn’t know there were enemies within a thousand leagues — their patrols were pillagers, not scouts; their convoys from Renan were guarded by a handful of soldiers; and the camps’ security was as slack as any peacetime cantonment.
We would strike with magic and fire. Cymea took twigs, soaked them in a mineral solution, and chanted a spell over them. Then she built small fires around the tower’s courtyard, set soldiers around them with the twigs, and had warrants standing by with glasses. She chanted a spell loudly, then, at periodic intervals, from three minutes to a full hour, the warrants shouted orders, and the soldiers passed the twigs through the flames for an instant.
She had two other spells half-prepared, and we then rode down the road and toward the Maisirians, taking a circuitous course to the river, then south along it, until we were just beyond the loose perimeter around Renan.
Cymea felt a warning spell, so we withdrew to a copse and settled in for the night. I could see the lights of Renan in the distance, remembered it as once, an ancient, beautiful city out of time, full of magic and romance.
But our army had retreated through Renan after the Maisirian campaign, the Maisirians following, laying waste to all Urey. I wondered what splendor was left, Renan occupied once more by the loathed invaders.
At the beginning of the last watch, we were roused, saddled our horses, and led them to a farm pond for watering and grain from our saddlebags, while we shivered in the cold mist, near rain, chewing disconsolately on sour bread and dried meat. We still wore our mock-Maisirian uniform, but all of us had a red scrap of cloth around our necks, so we’d not be slaughtering each other in the coming confusion.
We went forward slowly, at the walk, along a winding course, a small pass through a cluster of hillocks. Here I told off one company of infantry. I was pleased they’d been angry at being cut out of the forthcoming action, rather than delighted at not going into danger.
I’d noted a distinctive rocky formation the day before, just after the pass widened into the valley, and when we reached it, I shouted for my buglers to send the troops out on line. That roused the Maisirians, but they had no more than a few minutes before we hit their vedettes and sent them fleeing or lying still in the mire.
Cymea cast her first spell, rocking in the saddle, and the sky behind us turned red, but not red with a false dawn, red with death fires and flame. Swirling through the mist, which blew in curtains around us, were ghost figures of horsemen, monsters, giants, striding forward as the bugles sang for the trot.
We went through their front lines, no more than shallow trenches for the most part, and were among them.
Our ears twinged as sound screeched, like pipes but shriller, setting my teeth on edge. Cymea had studied and learned some of Tenedos’s best spells. Then there were tents ahead, and we were slashing at tent ropes, canvas, anyone who stumbled out, gaping for an instant before we sent them back to the Wheel.
Chosen men tossed away the ensorcelled twigs as they rode, and after we passed some flamed up, far larger than the bits of wood warranted. The fire licked at the Maisirian canvas, and wet as they were, the tentage took fire. Other twigs would flame up later, adding to the chaos.
The sound changed, became lower, the screaming of terrified men and women. It built, and now it was echoed by human throats as the Maisirians broke.
A man wearing a gaudy uniform ran out of the darkness, an officer, but armed with an infantryman’s pike. I slashed it in two, cut him down, rode on as he fell. A man was mounting a horse, waving a sword wildly, and I killed him from behind and his horse stampeded as blood gouted, the dead weight of his rider slumping over the animal’s neck.
There was a group of soldiers, a calstor shouting at them, and he went down with Curti’s arrow in his bowels, and the soldiers fled, no warrant left to stiffen them to battle.
We cut through the camp to my real goal, one of the supply dumps that held I know not what under long rows of tarpaulins, and we smashed the wooden fence around it, and more fire twigs were scattered. There was a fence and my horse leapt it. Another balked, three men were thrown in the milling confusion, and others pulled them up behind, and we rode on, into open country.
We cut left, circling back the way we came, slicing through another camp, and fires were roaring up around the valley, not our arsonous flames, but the lamps of headquarters as officers came awake.
Again bugles brayed, and we slowed to a walk, the mule-mounted infantry caught up with the cavalrymen, and we hit the Maisirians as they stumbled into their battle lines, still not sure who was attacking, where the enemy was coming from.
We ravened on, destroying as we went.
I counted ten turnings of the glass, then commanded the retreat to be sounded, and we slashed back the way we’d come.
We’d tarried too long, or so it must have appeared to the Maisirians, and there were mounted men coming after us, far more than my hundred and a half. We fled, galloping hard, trying to look as if we ourselves had grown clumsy in fear, and the Maisirians came after us, and Cymea’s second spell, intended to give the enemy confidence, was sent out.
We thundered through the low pass beyond the lines as if demons were after us, then reined around.
Our ambush element rose up on either side of the track as the Maisirians rode past, and arrows spat and lances thudded into the bunched-up mass of horsemen.
We charged into the melee, as the ambush’s rear element closed the gate on the pursuing cavalry, and it was a nasty, swirling bit of various hells; then the Maisirians were able to break out to freedom, back to their lines.
“To horse,” I shouted, then heard somebody call, “We’ve got a prisoner! An officer!”
“Toss him across a mule and come on!” I shouted. “The rest of their damned army’s coming fast.”
We galloped away, Cymea now at the rear, casting spells of confusion, spells to suggest we’d turned off at this ford or into that thicket. Twice we stopped after crossing water, and she made other incantations to muddle our pursuers.
But the skirmishers I sent to the hilltops we passed didn’t see any pursuit, and I remembered how the Maisirians could either be the most dangerous or the most foolish of enemies.
Cymea rode up beside me, breathless, cheeks red with the wind and the driving rain.
“So that’s war?”
“That’s war,” I said. “When you’re on the winning side. It’s a whore’s get when you’re the one being ambushed.”
“Either way,” she said, “I didn’t like it much.”
I’d misread her expression for pleasure. Oddly enough, I liked her better for hating what we’d done.
“You�
�re not supposed to,” I said. “Just so long as you’re good at it.”
She nodded understanding, dropped back to add more bafflement.
• • •
The prisoner’s eyes opened, and he sat up. He rubbed his ribs and grunted.
“Bad enough knocking the wind out of me, you had to keep me foozled across that fucking jackass,” he grumbled.
I handed him a cup of wine. He drained it, glowered at me. “I should have known it was you. You bastard.” He looked at Yonge.
“And you. What a shit-heel pair of bastards.”
“How’d you ever get so gods-damned sloppy as to fall into that one?” Yonge demanded. “If you’d ridden like that on the border, I would have killed you ten years ago.”
“If I’d ridden like that back on the border, I would have deserved to die,” he agreed. “Now give me some more wine, Bandit Who Once Was a King, and try to stop gloating.”
He tried to stand, but his legs gave way. I caught him, helped him up.
“I thank you, Damastes of Numantia, Shum á Cimabue,” he said. “I wish I’d let them kill you back when we chased you across our border instead of playing the gentleman. Shit! Now you’re more of a Negaret than I am, it appears.”
It was Jedaz Faquet Bakr, leader of that Negaret tribe who’d met me at the Maisirian border and escorted me to Oswy. We’d ridden together, hunting, fishing, across the barren suebi, and I’d often thought enviously of his life.
“It’s only fair we took you,” I said. “Since you always insist on riding at the front.”
This was true, and of course it made sense that the half-horse, half-men Negaret had been first to pursue us, Bakr and his men the first of the first.
“A little far forward this time.”
“A little far forward,” I agreed.
“I’ve been fighting fools for so long I’ve gotten careless about someone who has brains enough to trap his back trail.” He sighed. “If you’re of a mind to kill me, I wouldn’t object that much. Perhaps I’m getting old and foolish, too old to lead my people.”
“Yak shit,” I retorted. “You’re just a prisoner. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. When we leave, I’ll cheerfully turn you loose, not even requiring parole, for I know you’d not honor it.”