Arcanist

by Terry Mancour

  I didn’t know what that meant for me. I was mortal. Human. All too human. As learned and supposedly wise as I was supposed to be, I was profoundly aware of my own ignorance about such things. Not even the gods seemed to be able to explain their own nature to me, leaving me hints and vague suggestions but no real guidance. They were even asking me to make decisions that affected the course of divine events . . . and I was fairly certain I would find a way to screw that up in spectacular fashion.

  What was even worse was the fact that they didn’t seem to mind that possibility. They seemed content to let a mortal wizard blunder around with powers and responsibilities far beyond his ken or control. That seemed like a terribly unacceptable risk, to my mortal mind. It certainly didn’t inspire a lot of faith.

  What kind of universe were they running, anyway?

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Gates of Muroshk

  “The rules of war? There are none, in the heat of battle.”

  Wilderlord Proverb

  From the Collection of Jannik the Rysh

  One fateful day, the spring rains finally stopped. The rivers surged and flooded, and then they began to recede, as they were wont to do this season. While the trees and plants that surrounded them seemed determined to turn as much of that water into lush, vibrant foliage, we all knew it wouldn’t be long until the rivers fell back to their normal banks . . . and usher in the season for war.

  Our steps came with renewed purpose at the thought of war. As busy as we were, we had felt secure as long as the roads were muddy and the rivers high. When the Wilderlands began drying out from the long early spring soaking, it was only a matter of time before Shakathet’s legions felt confident enough to emerge from his fortresses and attack. That was as much inspiration for haste as anyone needed.

  Thousands of men had marched down the muddy trails from Vanador and taken positions along the line we proposed to defend. Thousands more had taken to horse and gathered at Megelin, where Azar and his knights prepared them for battle. Wenek and Rustallo led hundreds of men from the Pearwoods and the southeastern baronies in my realm, mostly on foot, to fortify Forgemont. And that was just one contribution.

  The Pele Towers had contributed mightily. Hundreds of warmagi prepared spells at scores of fortifications and outposts across the land. In the east, Carmella’s great wooden engines were rushed to new emplacements, placed by hoxter or pulled by teams of oxen. And in Vanador Town, thousands of nimble hands prepared bandages, banners and field rations for the war effort. On the Street of Steel, backs were bent over forges and anvils, and hammers flew to craft as many weapons and as much armor as they could.

  It was a busy, anxious time. While my people were given confidence and experience with their victory over Gaja Katar, the threat of Shakathet’s legions was known to be greater. While they were better armed and armored than they had been in winter, most would be fighting far from home with little hope of relief, should things go awry. The faces I saw in the markets of Vanador, and the grim expressions the men marching south, told me just how determined and desperate the folk of the Magelaw were. Spring brought foreboding along with its promise of hope, that year. And all knew that summer would not arrive without the stain of blood.

  Mavone’s secret scouts provided the exact time when Shakathet committed to the attack. The watchers reported when the long, sinuous dark banner over his fortress was changed for a short, square dark banner with what had to be his personal sign: a jagged bolt of lightning striking a stylized sun, both in a pale, sickly yellow against the gray-green fabric of the banner. Perhaps it suited Alka Alon artistic sensibilities, but it was lacking, in terms of human heraldry. To us it looked a bit like flower with a badly mangled stem.

  But at the signal, things started happening around his staging area. Legions began forming up. Siege worms began being herded into line. Great wagons and wains full of supplies were hauled to the road from the squat warehouses around the old castle. Hundreds of gurvani scouts riding Fell Hounds began ranging the route ahead. And, most foreboding of all, the eaves and square towers of the old keep became infested with the poison-fanged wyverns, both the large and small variety.

  The activity gave us notice, and Mavone’s men began quietly withdrawing from their hidden outposts in the Penumbra, while the Sky Ryders began patrolling the place, high overhead. Reports began coming into his headquarters hourly, once that happened.

  The great map that Mavone had prepared became peppered with markers, each holding down a slip of parchment detailing each report of the unit and its composition. The cenacle of wizards who communicated with various forces assembled nearby were diligent with their messages, and dispatches and reports began to arrive with increased frequency.

  Mavone read every one. This was his most important duty, in the war, and he was attentive to it. Terleman checked with him regularly, and Sandoval and the other commanders haunted the chamber to see how their foe was developing in his march. I don’t think I’d ever seen Sandy so agitated, even during the battle of Spellgate. I don’t think I’d ever seen Mavone so anxious.

  Once again, I tried to stay out of their way and look confident.

  I was involved, of course – from time to time there were decisions that my staff felt I needed to make – and be responsible for. I was also as well-informed as I could be about the state of preparation and the disposition of our foe. I spent plenty of time reading dispatches and studying maps, as well as hearing reports from the senior staff. In the early days of the campaign, most of what I read about concerned the great fortress of Muroshk. Magemaps, drawings and field reports painted a somber picture.

  Mavone’s Ravens continued to scout Muroshk thoroughly and without too much danger; as adept at Shakathet might have been at building an army, he didn’t understand counterintelligence, much. One of Mavone’s outposts remained undiscovered within two hundred yards of Muroshk’s dark gate, and it was abandoned only when his forces began assembling. Other posts were farther out, but even better positioned to surveil our foe. The intelligence they gathered painted a compelling picture of Shakathet’s intentions.

  When the day finally came when the great war banner above the dark tower changed, and horns blew deep and forebodingly from its towers, we knew Shakathet was finally ready. The gates opened, and the scouts poured forth as our spies watched and counted.

  Hundreds and hundreds of Fell Hound cavalry, most ridden by one or two gurvani warriors, padded across the muddy track and out into the old abandoned fields of the Saramine Wilderlords – a family famous for its feuding and among the first lost to the invasion. Other brutes were riderless, but no less fierce; indeed, they wore leather harnesses affixed with sharp studs and even blades to make them more dangerous in battle. All began to range eastward, screening the roads and forests and patrolling the flanks of the assembling army, the way cavalry is supposed to do.

  For days they spread out over the fields around Muroshk and ranged the Penumbra, the largely uninhabited no-man’s land between Korbal’s lands and our own. There were no real villages left in the region to burn and sack. The few human settlements in the Penumbra were mere outposts, or the isolated folk who called themselves the Free Lords of the Penumbra. Everyone else had long fled from the shadow.

  Interestingly enough, Mavone, with the help of Jannik the Rysh, had managed to cultivate relations enough with these stubborn folk that many had provided intelligence, or even assistance, against the hounds of Muroshk. And the Free Lords were no cowards.

  The Penumbra is often considered desolate, and compared to its past, the land is both depeopled and ruined. The fertile vales had been gutted of their agricultural base, leaving but few remnants. The invasion stripped away most of the flesh from the vibrant Wilderlands culture, but the bones yet remained. In places inconvenient for the gurvani legions to devour, or too remote to reach without intention, humanity lingered. Like weeds growing defiantly through the cracks in a castle wall, the people of the Penumbra were few in numbe
r; but where they did cling, they dug in stubbornly.

  Most were residents of manors and freeholds of the most rustic sort, particularly those enjoying some natural defense, of which the craggy hills of the Penumbra had an abundance. Why they persisted in such treacherous conditions, when better lives and fortunes could be had in the east and the south, was a private matter. For some, the idea of flight from lands won in conquest by their ancestors wounded their pride. For others, the utter lack of civil authority of any sort brought new-found prosperity to their protected lands by default. For yet others, the prospect of constant danger had some allure that compelled them to stay and fight for their lands, again and again.

  For their lot was near constant peril. Not merely from the more organized gurvani lands to the west, but from their bellicose peers and the bandits who now prowled the forests like terminal scavengers, picking bare the last bits of flesh from the land. Some Penumbra lordlings and bandit kings had turned renegade and had gone so far as to swear fealty to Sheruel and the Goblin King. Korbal’s lieutenants did not consider themselves obliged to respect those oaths. That put the Penumbra lords in a bind. Now that their goblin patron was in exile, so was their power to call upon the gurvani legions to uphold their rule.

  Others had clung to old titles, or created their own, to justify their lordship over their holdings. Only a few maintained their allegiance to the Duke, and whatever power had been placed over them by their sovereign, and among those Mavone found the best allies. But most of the Penumbra lords fought for survival and left such political concerns alone.

  They were the ones who proudly proclaimed their “freedom” in the Penumbra – free from sovereign rule, petty regulation and formal justice. They styled themselves “Free Lords of the Penumbra” and were an odd collection of idealists, bandit kings and generally stubborn, pig-headed warriors, both noble and common-born. The only law they followed was the one they could enforce at the point of a sword. Mavone had convinced a few of these lordlings to take up arms, paying in newly-minted silver or in livestock. Indeed, he found them far more eager for cattle than for coin, as most of the abundant stock in the Wilderlands had long ago been consumed.

  When the gates of Muroshk opened and the Fell Hound riders began to range, they fought viciously to keep their precious cows safe and the gurvani wary of ranging too far from the sight of their castle. The Free Lords did little actual damage, but their resistance gave Mavone a little time and a lot of intelligence about how our enemy was moving, and that was invaluable.

  For Shakathet was preparing to advance. After the canine cavalry, the first great legions of gurvani infantry began to move forward, to allow the castle to assemble more. A great, dark force gathered at the gates of Muroshk and began to spread out toward the east like a malevolent spear. Once the rivers receded and the muddy ground began to dry, the great wains and siege engines he was building were hauled to the road by his siege worms, and his great army mobilized in earnest.

  As voracious as Mavone was for the many detailed accounts he was receiving, he still wasn’t satisfied until he laid his own eyes on the situation.

  He arranged for one of our erstwhile allies in the Penumbra to provide shelter for his Ravens on a hill about a half-mile away from Shakathet’s seat, and he had one of his agents establish a Waystone there. Once his men were withdrawn, this was the most forward-situated outpost he had. It was well-concealed, both physically and magically. The complicated approach to the top of the stony hill was guarded by a motley collection of locals and a handful of Mavone’s Ravens.

  He invited me and the rest of the military staff to view the enemy from that vantage, once he’d secured the site. He had us arrive one at a time through the Ways, instead of coming all together, as he did not want to attract too much attention, magically speaking. His concerns seemed a little obsessive, but Mavone wasn’t taking any chances on a surprise attack or assassination attempt. He’s thorough and careful. That’s why I had hired him.

  When we’d all arrived, he used his baculus to project an image from a magical construct he had emplaced near enough to the front gates to serve as an efficient spy. From the angle of the image, it had to be up in a tree, somewhere, but it was well placed enough for us to see the churning anthill of evil that opposed us. In that one moment, it became stunningly clear just how vast an army Shakathet had assembled at the crumbling old castle. Muroshk was a dark blight on the green lands around it.

  Shakathet’s tenure had seen a rise in the place’s fortunes, even if it had done little for the décor. There hadn’t been much to start with. The fortress was situated on a high hill, once the hall of some Wilderlord family of repute. Now it hulked there, beyond the edge of the Penumbra, and gathered malevolent strength.

  It might have been grand old hall, once, when it was a Wilderlord keep. It was a depressing and dreary place, now. The streaky gray granite used to build the original castle had looked like grainy soot, during the best of times. Now it looked horrid. The expansions and improvements the gurvani and the Nemovorti made had only spread that stain across the original hilltop and across the barren meadows and tortured fields.

  Great sheds as large as guild halls were filled with provision from the slave farms of the Penumbra. Sprawling encampments of legion after legion of gurvani gathered. Trolls were bivouacked in one shallow vale, near to the great fields of siege engines and other constructions, and a great herd of siege worms was stabled in an open corral. They were being fitted with the engines and castlets they would bear into battle.

  Terrible and foul was the great stain of Muroshk. Terrible and foul . . . and really, really muddy.

  Spring rains in the Wilderlands are brief and intense, usually, but they occur daily during the season. The thirsty meadows and woodlands absorb much of the rain quickly, but the rest runs off into the many rocky streams that seem to lay everywhere.

  That is, unless you’ve had fifty thousand goblins marching back and forth across it. Then it turns into a muddy, sodden mess. The smear of Muroshk had been churned with thousands and thousands of reluctant steps, some inspired by the lash, some bearing great burdens, and all tearing the ground apart. I knew from brutal personal experience just how miserable mud could make an infantryman. I couldn’t imagine the lashes of hobgoblin overseers would have improved the experience.

  “That’s a lot of goblins,” Sandy muttered, as he stared at the image.

  “To be fair, there’s a lot of trolls and hobgoblins down there, too,” Terleman said, cheerfully. “And look at all the siege worms!”

  “The majority of Shakathet’s light cavalry has already been deployed,” Mavone said, before Sandy could say something rude. “At least two thousand Fell Hound riders. He seems to have drained every kennel in the Penumbra for this effort. And their patrols are being careful, too. Much harder to pick apart than the pups we faced this winter,” he said, authoritatively.

  “Let’s hope he’s as foolish with their use as Gaja Katar was,” muttered Terleman. “But I fear not. The way those units are deployed indicates a far more organized military mind and a better officer corps.”

  “As well as a real magical corps,” I agreed, as I used Insight to evaluate the spellwork below. “Every unit has a goblin spark amongst their grunts. Or an Enshadowed officer armed with ancient sorcery. They’re protected, at least from basic warmagic.”

  “That just means we have to get creative,” Sandy said, with a sigh. “But it also means that some of our tricks won’t work on them. Ishi’s tits, look at how well-covered the vanguard is by antidetection spells. I don’t think Gaja Katar managed that level of sorcery in the thick of battle, much less before he began marching!”

  “And look at that siege train,” Terleman nodded, calling up an image of the vast field in which scores of mangonels and catapults, as well as bundles I could not identify, were being prepared for deployment, pulled into place by great trolls surrounded by thousands of gurvani artillerymen. “They come prepared to destroy ca
stles. More than one, by the sheer number of devices. And they are well-defended by both hound and scrug,” he noted, conversationally.

  “Clearly we face a general who understands war,” Mavone agreed, solemnly. “They are still assembling the baggage train, but my spies have told me that they have more than a sufficiency of stores to keep the army in the field for months. And their supply line back to their stronghold is far shorter than Gaja Katar’s was from his. Hunger will not be our ally in this campaign,” he warned.

  “Nor the weather, I’m afraid,” I agreed, as I disengaged my baculus from scrying. “Warm, clear skies, for the next few days, from what the weather wise have predicted. If we are to defeat Shakathet, we’ll have to do it honestly. This is going to be a fight,” I announced.

  We all stood there a moment, in silence, contemplating the great task ahead of us. This force was as large as the army we stopped at Timberwatch. Only I’d had twice the men I’d had then, and our foe was little-acquainted with our methods of warfare.

  Now they knew us and our style of combat as well as any feudal lord. Arrogance and pride had not convinced Shakathet to arm himself as if he were fighting against Alka Alon in the wars of old. He had learned. And we could see he had taken the advice counsellors and undertaken a meticulous preparation for war as he found it, not as he desired it.

  “Wyverns!” Sandy said, suddenly, as he pointed with his staff. “Look! How many?” he demanded, as he began to improve his scrying to find out. “Over a hundred!”

  “And we have less than a score of Sky Riders,” Mavone said, troubled. “Minalan, we might not control the skies, this time.”