by Ian Irvine
‘Fire!’
More soldiers fell. The survivors whipped their shields around to cover their left sides, exposing their chests to frontal fire, and charged.
‘Face forwards,’ roared Nish, ‘and now fire at the man directly ahead. Hold fast, lancers. They’re taking a lot of casualties and they’ll be exhausted when they get here. We can beat them.’
Gi fired, drew another arrow, then gasped.
‘What is it? Are you hit?’ He hadn’t seen the enemy fire, but Klarm might have battle mancers among his troops, attacking with unknown Arts. ‘Fire!’
‘My arrow went right through its target,’ she said in a tight voice, struggling to control her terror, ‘and the soldier didn’t even check. He just kept on.’
Her teeth were chattering, her eyes darting this way and that, but she forced herself to hold firm and he admired her all the more for it. That first, terrifying experience of battle – even without mancery – could break the strongest soldier.
Klarm must be using the tears to undermine the morale of the superstitious Gendrigoreans. ‘Fire! I think some of the enemy are illusions.’
The enemy were ploughing through the mud. ‘W-we’re going to die, Nish,’ said Gi.
He thought so too, but he had to pretend otherwise. ‘Hold firm, Gi – illusions can’t fight. We can beat the enemy. We’ll come through this yet, you and I.’
The lie sickened him, and especially telling it to sweet, gentle Gi. Why, why had he allowed her to come?
‘How can we tell which is which?’ said Gi, firing again.
The leaders were less than a hundred paces away when Nish noticed that not all of the soldiers were struggling in the mud; some were moving easily through it with not a trace of muck splattering from their boots. ‘Fire!
‘Watch their feet – half the soldiers are phantoms, illusions,’ he roared, ‘and they can’t touch you. Klarm hasn’t got the numbers.’ Yet even with half their number, the enemy were a superior fighting force.
The air-sled drifted his way, about twenty spans above the ground. Its metal frame was slightly bent from where it had crashed earlier, and a clump of grass dangled from a kink in one of its runners.
‘Should I bring the dwarf down, Nish?’ said a red-haired, balding man, one of Nish’s best archers.
Nish hesitated, but only for a second; Klarm’s death could swing the odds their way, and it was kill or be killed now. ‘Have a go.’
The archer swung, aimed and fired in one fluid movement. The arrow streaked towards Klarm’s throat, but the dwarf’s head whipped around, his hand reached for Reaper, and a moment before the arrow reached the target it burst into splinters.
The caduceus shrilled; Nish’s head screamed and, momentarily a red mist obscured his vision. It cleared; in another flash of clearsight he saw the churning core of the caduceus again, then a vibration shot from Reaper towards the red-haired archer, a tube of vapour condensing in its wake, and struck.
The archer’s bow shattered first, then his hand; the vibration propagated up his arm, tearing it to pieces in a stinging spray of blood, tissue fragments and shards of bone.
The archer was splattered with the pulverised remains of his arm, as was everyone around him, and blood was pumping from his shoulder. He had not made a sound, but he was so pale that the freckles on his fair skin stood out like moles. His eyes were fixed on Nish as if to say, ‘Why did you tell me to shoot?’
Gi let out a moan that made Nish’s skin creep, and many others echoed it. The superstitious Gendrigoreans could face death in battle with fortitude, but the uncanny Arts terrified them, and if they panicked the battle was lost.
Then, oddly, Klarm cried out in pain, the air-sled dipped sharply, recovered and shot away.
Tulitine reached the bleached archer as he collapsed and pressed her fingers against his spurting arteries, but Nish knew the man could not be saved; not up here. The healers Dulya and Ghosh ran out, bearing the stretcher.
Nish turned away; they had their job to do, and he his own, and one second’s inattention could prove fatal. ‘Hold, hold!’ he roared to the nearby rabble. ‘We’re beating them. Aim! Ready? Fire!’
Fortunately, most of his militia were too far away to have seen what had happened. The archers fired, but Nish did not see many enemy fall. The real soldiers laboured across the boggy soil, churning it to mud.
Nish caught his breath. Ten seconds until they struck. ‘Fire!’ He rubbed his eyes, for his vision kept going in and out of focus and the headache was worse.
‘Fire! Archers, fall back.’ They could do no more. Effectively, half his militia was now useless.
The illusory soldiers disappeared; the real ones kept on and struck, driving through the lancers’ spears with ruthless efficiency, catching the spearheads on their shields and hacking through the shafts with their swords.
Before his lancers could recover, the enemy were attacking the front line, smashing a lancer’s shield aside with one blow, taking him in the belly or throat with the next, then shouldering the sagging body out of the way to attack the next man, and the next.
Even with only half their expected numbers it was terrible, bloody slaughter, as sickening as anything Nish had ever seen in war. In ten more minutes, the Imperial forces would butcher the lot of them, and it could not be borne. Neither could he do anything to stop it.
Three soldiers were converging on Gi and Tulitine, grinning. Nish came out from behind them, sprang forwards and thrust his sabre through the ribcage of the nearest man, who died with an astonished look on his swarthy face.
He had not seen Nish coming. The Imperial troops were well trained but there had been no war in ten years and they were not battle hardened the way Nish had been. He whirled, struck upwards and slew the second man with a slash that took his head off, then turned for the third.
The soldier was out of reach, and Gi was defending furiously with the heavy sword that had been her grandfather’s, but even had she been trained in sword fighting she could never match this man. He was toying with her, feasting on her terror, delivering a minor cut to the shoulder, another to the thigh. Nish tried desperately to reach him but the soldier saw him coming and laughed as he thrust his blade into her heart.
Loyal, gentle Gi, who had been Nish’s closest ally since he’d arrived in Gendrigore, fell on her back into the mud. Her eyes met his, she looked puzzled, then their light faded and she was dead.
No time to grieve; no time for anything. Nish ran and, with a wild swipe, hacked through the soldier’s side. He screamed and fell on top of Gi’s body, thrashing. Nish heaved him off and put him out of his agony with one swift thrust. After a last look at her compact, bloody form and her pretty, bewildered face, he shook his head and turned to survey the battlefield, which had descended into the chaos of hundreds of individual melees.
‘The cause is lost,’ bellowed Flydd from not far away. ‘Yggur, if you’re going to do anything, do it now! Nish, this way.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Nish. He had led his faithful militia here and nothing could induce him to run out on them now.
On the circling air-sled, Klarm was peering around the steamy clearing, searching for him, and Nish felt an urgent need to hide. He slid in behind Tulitine but Klarm touched Reaper and Nish’s head felt as though it were bursting – as if the dwarf had used the same spell on him as he had on the red-haired archer.
Every nerve fibre sang and his scarred hand shrieked with pain. The scars took on a bright, silvery glow, like a reflection of the mercuric shimmer of the tears, and even when he slipped the hand inside his shirt, its glow could still be seen. He’d never hide now.
He raised a fallen spear in his shining hand; the caduceus shrilled, his headache faded and his vision cleared suddenly, as if he were seeing the world through a diamond lens – his clearsight had switched on, as it sometimes did when things were desperate.
From the corner of his eye he made out an aura swirling around the caduceus; high ab
ove them, the Profane Tears roiled menacingly. And, to his surprise, something pulsed within the blade of the sabre – Vivimord’s enchantment?
It was no use to him; he had no idea how to use it. Catching a movement from the corner of his eye, Nish whirled; a giant of a warrior was heading for him. Over his back was strapped a span-long sword, and he carried a weighted net whose cords had a faint aura, no doubt linked to the tears. On seeing Nish’s shining scars, the giant raised the net. Once he threw it, it would be impossible to evade.
THREE
Nish had no time to think – clearsight suggested that the giant would toss the net to the left, so he hurled himself to the right and prayed that he was not mistaken. He wasn’t; the net missed save for its weighted edge, which settled over his calves, burning like the touch of the tears, and he began to lose feeling from the knees down.
Biting back a gasp, he tried to squirm free, no longer able to feel his feet. He heaved his right leg to one side but the edge of the net felt as though it was searing through his left ankle.
The giant flicked the net into the air to envelop Nish completely and, unable to escape, he transferred the sabre to his glowing left hand and hacked at the soldier’s knees.
He missed; the tip caught in the net and he braced himself for another jolt of agony. Instead, his hand brightened, the enchanted sabre sang and sheared through the net as if it were cotton.
From on high, over the fighting, Nish heard Klarm’s anguished cry. Had the spell he’d used to light up Nish’s scar backfired on him? Could the enchanted sword have something to do with it? Nish didn’t understand what he’d done, but he planned to keep doing it. Hacking the net to pieces, he lunged for the giant, who snatched at the sword on his back. Before he could bring it over his head, Nish had opened his belly with the sabre.
The giant clutched at his entrails with both hands, trying to stop them from sliding out, but they spilled through his fingers and he fell. Nish ducked behind him to survey the scene.
Dozens of his militia lay dead and more were dying by the second. As he stood up, tall, dapper Forzel, who had somehow contrived to look immaculate even in this mud bath, was beheaded, his head landing face-down in the muck. Forzel the joker would laugh no more.
The air-sled, which had been wobbling through the air not far above, recovered and shot upwards. A signal horn rang out.
‘What’s the dwarf doing?’ said Beyl, a short, darkly tanned woodsman who was better than most with staff or sword.
At forty-three, he was one of the oldest of the Gendrigorean militia. His frizzy grey hair, hacked short with a knife, covered his head like a grey carpet and he wore an earring shaped like an ear of corn.
‘He’s calling down the troops he left guarding the ridges,’ said Stibble, a burly blacksmith covered in black hair. He did not carry a sword, but wielded his long-handled hammer with deadly efficiency. ‘We’re beating him.’
‘Nah,’ said Gens, a little gnome-like shoemaker whose fingers were stained brown from leather dressing. He wasn’t much of a swordsman but he was hard to hit, being so small and nimble, and his knife work was accomplished. ‘He’s just making sure of us.’
Zana, a stocky cutler with cropped hair and a flat nose, said nothing at all. She carried the biggest sword of anyone in the militia, and used it with a surgeon’s precision.
Two soldiers came at Nish, one from the left swinging a cudgel, the man on the right raising a mallet. They had to take him alive but they weren’t bothered about breaking bones, and he couldn’t fight them both at once – or could he? With clearsight singing along his nerve fibres, maybe he could … if he were game to trust it.
Nish ran between them – normally a suicidal move – then turned away from the tall soldier with the mallet and slashed at the more dangerous opponent, the thickset fellow with the cudgel. He swung a horizontal blow at Nish, who ducked: he’d known what his opponent was going to do.
Sensing that the man behind him was about to strike, Nish swung the sabre up and over his left shoulder and felt it hit something hard, the soldier’s forehead. He fell away and, as the man with the cudgel took a second swipe, Nish leaned backwards and, striking up at an angle, took him down.
‘I think I’ve got something,’ cried Yggur over the clamour.
Nish wove back through the fighting, towards the caduceus. Yggur carried a jag-sword but had not drawn it, for none of the enemy had dared go that close to him. He was not only a tall, powerful man and a fine swordsman, but also a mancer of mystery who had lived for more than a thousand years. No one knew where he came from, and few people understood his Art, which had stayed with him even when the destruction of the nodes had robbed most other mancers of their Art.
He stood with his back to the caduceus, long legs spread, arms held in a vase shape above his head, chanting.
‘What is it?’ Nish panted. More soldiers were converging on him, and even with the benefit of clearsight he could not hold them all off.
‘I don’t know …’ Yggur turned towards Nish but did not appear to see him. ‘I’ll have to try it.’
‘Make it snappy!’ bellowed Flydd.
Yggur strained until the hairs on his upraised arms began to smoke and a tenuous mist formed around him. People cried out; Nish recognised Klarm’s voice among them. He felt waves of heat and the caduceus brightened until it resembled a rod of molten lava welded to the earth, so bright that it burned.
The pouring rain turned to steam clouds which were whipped into a spiral around the caduceus, spinning ever faster until they formed a miniature tornado that was plucking grass and mud up with it. The grass flash-flamed to char and was whirled up the funnel of the ever-growing tornado, out of sight. The clash of sword on sword stopped as friend and foe stood side by side, staring.
Yggur sagged, his eyes wide and fearful, and he was not a man given to exposing his emotions. ‘It feels as though the caduceus is feeding on me,’ he rasped. ‘Drawing the very essence out of me.’
‘Get on with it,’ said Flydd, pushing through, jag-sword in hand. Shreds of bloody uniform were caught between the jags, and what looked like a man’s thumb. ‘We need that mist.’
He glanced towards the air-sled, which was drifting sideways across the battlefield. Klarm clung to the pole flying the God-Emperor’s standard as if he could barely stand up.
‘The runt isn’t looking so bold now,’ sneered Flydd. Again his yearning eyes lingered upon the tears.
‘The caduceus hurt him through Gatherer, but he’ll soon recover,’ said Yggur.
‘Try again.’
Yggur put up his arms, gave Nish another of those blank stares, then set his jaw and forced hard. Nish’s scarred hand burned anew, but its silvery glow faded a little. As he took the sabre in his left hand, which sometimes helped to ease the pain, a mist sprang up, thickened and whirled in towards the caduceus.
There came a sound like thunder, save that the echoing boom was at the beginning and the whip crack at the end; spectral figures wisped into being above the caduceus, but vanished again; allies and enemies cried out, all at once. The air-sled wobbled and this time almost fell out of the sky.
‘Yggur has no idea what he’s doing, has he?’ said Nish to Flydd.
‘Not a clue,’ said Flydd. ‘Yet if he can gain us a breathing space –’
The sky turned yellow, darkened to the purple of a bruise and slowly went black. Had it not been for the uncanny red radiance coming from the caduceus, Nish would not have been able to see at all. The whirling wind was chilly now and blowing right through his sodden clothing, but it suddenly died and the moisture in the saturated air condensed into fog so thick that he could not see his silver-scarred hand on the hilt of the sabre.
The clash of weapons stopped again, for no one could see to fight. The groans of the wounded rose in pitch. A woman was crying, ‘Don’t leave me,’ over and over; a man sobbed, ‘Please, please, put me out of my misery.’
As Nish groped through the dark, he could not
help remembering other battlefields littered with the dead, and the maimed comrades who, too badly injured to walk, had been left to die because nothing could be done for them. One war ended and another began. Would there ever be peace? And what was the point of fighting when there was no hope of victory?
His sodden shirt flapped as the whirlwind picked up again, and momentarily the bright caduceus pierced the fog like a lighthouse beacon – but was it offering shelter, or luring them to destruction?
The fog had thinned fractionally; he could just make out his feet now. Time to retreat. ‘Chief Signaller?’ he yelled. ‘Midge?’
She did not reply, and he was cursing her for not staying close, as he’d ordered, when he trod on her shoulder. Midge lay face up in the mud with a broken spear through her chest. She was not yet eighteen.
Shaking his head at the waste, Nish heaved the signal horn out from under her, shook the bloodstained mud from it and blew three ringing blasts followed by two short ones – the signal to retreat to the lowest point of the clearing.
Was there really any chance? Wherever he led them, the enemy would follow once the fog cleared. And yet, while they lived, while they were free, a tiny hope remained, and Nish had fanned the embers of such meagre hopes into flame before today.
Another clap of inverted thunder echoed forth and he heard the air-sled whistling across the sky.
‘Come down, you treacherous little flea!’ Yggur roared.
The air-sled made a grinding sound; Nish heard a monstrous splat, the sound of mud spattering in all directions and steam belching up. The dwarf cried out, ‘The tears, the tears!’
He must have dropped them during the crash but there was no chance of seizing them – Nish would never find them in the fog. Besides, even without them, Klarm was a powerful mancer who still had his knoblaggie.
After blowing the signal again, Nish moved down the slope. Distantly, other horns repeated the message. The fog was slowly thinning – he could see two paces now – and he made out several of his militia moving in the same direction.