Dark Forge

by Miles Cameron

  “We’ll do whatever it takes,” Aranthur said. “Right. We’re on point. Let’s ride.”

  Dahlia smiled. Softly, she said, “One day at this and you sound like an officer.”

  Sasan laughed. “Good luck, friends! I’ll just stay back here with my cut-throats.”

  The three of them rode forward and took the point. Vilna appointed four new troopers for the support to the point, and they were off.

  They rode perhaps four hundred paces to the next arch. Aranthur raised his magesight, and the span appeared clear, but his heart raced as they passed over it.

  “I’m awake now,” Ansu said.

  “I think this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” Dahlia added.

  “I’m assuming—hoping—that I will see the stigal in the Aulos.” Aranthur winced at his own lack of assurance.

  “A real polemagos can hide his casting in plain sight.” Dahlia shrugged. “I have my sight up, too. And some other things.”

  They rode forward. Two terrifying bridges later, they all stopped to drink water.

  “I’m not sure I can do this all day,” Ansu allowed.

  Aranthur nodded. He breathed deeply and tried to calm his nerves. A mere sword fight seemed like a possible relief.

  As they approached the next bridge, Rasce shied, and Aranthur reined in, just as his sword moaned.

  “Stop,” he said. But he was too late.

  The red flash was so intense that Aranthur was blind for seconds. Ansu fell from his horse.

  The horses panicked, and Ansu was kicked.

  Aranthur managed to control Rasce and all he could see was spots.

  “What happened?” he called. “What the hells?”

  “Oh, Lady,” Dahlia said.

  Aranthur’s vision began to clear.

  Dahlia was sitting on the road, and Ansu lay on his back, holding his ribs. The bridge was destroyed, and the dark water rolled just beneath Rasce’s front feet.

  “My shields caught it,” Dahlia said. “Holy Lady Fuck.”

  She turned and spat blood.

  Aranthur dismounted and walked down to the edge of the stream. It was the clear stream they’d watered at the day before. He could see the focus, and nothing showed in the Aulos in his magesight.

  He shook his head. But then he started testing what he saw—looking for traces. He found sihr on the ruined bridge and on the ground.

  “Dahlia, can we refine magesight?” he asked.

  She looked at him.

  “If we confined the sight only to sihr,” he said, “could we achieve a finer resolution?”

  She got to her feet and drank from her canteen, spat, and drank again. But when he showed her the focus, she nodded. She cast her seeing volteia three times. The third time she smiled.

  “Jackpot. Not just sihr but their ‘style’ of sihr.”

  “Style?” he asked.

  “Another time.”

  She taught him, quickly and efficiently, how to alter his school-learned volteia.

  She managed a smile.

  “In Ars Magika, they taught us that a volteia is too simple to be altered,” she said. “Almost like a glyph. But my sister taught me how to open them up. They’re not all solid the way you think.”

  Aranthur felt as if a whole new world of self-designed volteie opened before him. A way to avoid over-complex casting.

  He could see again, and when he used his kuria to power his new cantrip, he could see the focus quite clearly.

  “Don’t destroy it yet,” he said. “I want to see what my range is.”

  She nodded, and then the four support troopers galloped up, having already reported. Aranthur was touched by how happy they were to find him alive.

  He rode back and forth until the whole column caught up. He ordered Prince Ansu escorted to the rear; his broken ribs made breathing difficult.

  By the time all that had been organised, he had a better idea of what to look for. Less than a mile later, he and Dahlia caught a stigal.

  This one was different, however.

  Aranthur was just aiming his carabin at the focus, which looked to him to be a shrivelled human heart, when he heard the crack of a fusil.

  Dahlia yelled.

  Aranthur saw movement, turned, and pulled the trigger. The Pindari was aiming a fusil and he went down.

  Behind him, a dozen enemy cavalrymen reined in. They were waiting…

  Aranthur began to reload. He was about forty paces from the focus, and he had its range defined to the width of a woman’s finger. He knew Dahlia was somewhere behind him.

  She was hit. He could hear her moaning.

  He backed away, calling to Rasce, who ignored him.

  Two of the Pindaris had fusils and both were aimed at him. Suddenly the combat was very personal. He could feel the barrels tracking him. Both weapons fired together, and one ball went through the skirts of his fustanella. The other hit his military turban and tore it from his head.

  But they didn’t dare come forward, because they feared the stigal. They’d triggered the ambush too early.

  He found Dahlia’s horse. It was lying down, dead, a musket ball in its head. Dahlia was pinned beneath, her leg badly broken.

  He heard hoof beats; his own cavalry. He lay down by Dahlia, laid the barrel of the carabin on the horse’s rump, aimed, and fired.

  Missed.

  Reloaded.

  The Pindaris shuffled around on the road. Two of them shot at him. One ball thudded into the carcass of Dahlia’s dead mount.

  Aranthur got another bullet down the barrel. He thought of casting his enhancement but his level of fatigue was so high that he wasn’t sure he could get it off. Besides, he was learning to load quite quickly—and to do so without much thought, like a sword form he’d practised so often he could let his thoughts run free while he practised.

  He took more careful aim. The range was over a hundred paces; the short, rifled barrel was not ideal…

  Crack.

  One of the bandits went down.

  The others waved weapons.

  “We’ll be fine,” Aranthur said.

  “You have the oddest definition of fine, Aranthur Timos,” Dahlia said. “Oh, Lady. I’ve worked on the pain, but I can’t touch the break until this beast is off me.”

  The Pindaris fired again, and he heard a horse cry, and knew they had hit Rasce. The big horse hadn’t followed him back to Dahlia. He felt terrible and stupid for leaving the gelding, and he prayed…

  Aranthur was reloading when the rest of the patrol came up. At a crisp order, the whole patrol dismounted. Horse handlers took the horses and a dozen shots rang out.

  The Pindaris retreated up the road.

  Sasan got his “cut-throats” to lift the horse off Dahlia and she fainted.

  Then Aranthur led his people forward.

  Aranthur found that the Pindaris had shot Rasce. The horse was lying at the edge of the stream, still kicking. Aranthur had to work very carefully to the point where he could see the focus. He made himself ignore the suffering of his horse—a companion who had taken him across the Soulis mountains and had ploughed fields for his father.

  He aimed very carefully, but it took him three shots to destroy the focus, and by then he was crying. He ran forward, heedless of the fire of the Pindaris. Vilna led the troopers forward, and they passed him, leaping the stream.

  He knelt by his horse, but the big brute was already dead.

  Chimeg, one of his female Pastun troopers, brought him a Pindari pony.

  “Good horse?” she asked.

  He nodded. He was crying, as he had not cried for any of the dead or wounded after the battle.

  “Yes,” he managed.

  He was sobbing, and felt foolish and guilty, all together.

  The woman took some leaves of stock from a pouch at her waist and threw them over the horse. She said something Aranthur could not understand.

  “Come, syr,” she said.

  She scrambled back up the bank
and gave him the reins of the Pindari pony. Then, as if he was a child, she patted his hand, went back, and got his saddle and puffers from Rasce.

  “Thanks, Chimeg,” he said.

  With her help, he tacked up the Pindari pony, who was small, but appeared very tough.

  Sasan’s little troop of Safians passed over the bridge.

  Vilna came up and saluted.

  “Chimeg and Omga take point,” he said. “No lose officer.”

  Aranthur thought of the good woman who’d just thrown stock on the carcass of his horse.

  “No, I’m in front. Everyone else one hundred paces back, in case I screw up. We’re going to catch these bastards.”

  His fatigue—his increasing depression at the endless stress—was replaced by a burning desire to kill the Pindaris and their sorcerous allies. Aranthur understood that, under his rage and fatigue, he wasn’t thinking well, but he pushed forward.

  Vilna saluted. It was the first time he’d saluted Aranthur, as he had cause to remember as he rode down the empty road, alone. His new mount had a temper and bad manners and a mouth that was used to a spiked bit. Aranthur had to concentrate hard to stay in the saddle and also maintain his refined magesight, but he was wary, and he expected another attack.

  He picked up the stigal—not at a bridge, but on the open road, in a culvert where a farmer had placed terracotta tile to drain his field. Aranthur couldn’t get at the focus, so he rode back to Vilna and led his patrol north, over the open fields.

  “How do you feel about taking a risk?” he said.

  Sasan gave him a thumbs up. Vilna raised an eyebrow.

  “They are on the road,” Aranthur said. “Vilna takes half and goes south two hundred paces. I take Sasan and the rest and go north. We ride like hell.” He made a fist as he indicated closing on the rearguard that he was sure they were pursuing. “Leave… Chimeg here to tell Centark Domina what we’re about and what to avoid.”

  Sasan nodded.

  Vilna’s eyes narrowed.

  “If works, fine. Otherwise, stupid as fuck,” he said. “What of black sorcery in fields? In ditch? Buried in dirt?”

  Aranthur had only been a patroller for a day, but he felt that he understood his enemy.

  “They can’t be that good. We beat them like a drum, Vilna. They’re running.”

  Vilna shrugged. “You centark.”

  His disapproval was obvious.

  Sasan nodded. “I say, do it. Or turn around and go back. I’ve made a little war, Aranthur. The whole trick for these bastards is to break contact after every fight and give themselves time for the next trap, the next ambush, so all we do is walk into their shit. I’ve been them.” He shrugged.

  Aranthur turned to Vilna.

  “You know that I am a… A baqsa,” he said.

  Vilna made a sign of aversion, a pair of horns with his fingers.

  “Never, Bahadur. You are Magos, not baqsa.”

  “Wrong word,” Aranthur muttered. “Listen, though. I understand these bastards. They only have so much power in a day, and casting takes time.”

  Time we’re wasting in an argument.

  Can I really go against what this veteran wants?

  Vilna frowned.

  “You centark,” he said again.

  “Then let’s go,” Aranthur said.

  He wasn’t actually happy to leave the road, and the next field had been left ploughed, with deep furrows, and the horses struggled to cross it. The long, low hedgerow at the eastern end looked like the perfect cover for an ambush…

  But they passed it, and then they had to cross a deep ditch, and the whole idea seemed absurd, but minutes later they were on hard gravel, moving briskly. Aranthur could see the dust of Vilna’s wing, and they went forward, due east. The next time they came to a ditch they all jumped it and swept on, moving faster than they had all day.

  As the sun peaked above them, frying every man and every horse, Aranthur saw the twinkle of sun-dazzle on metal. Immediately he turned further north, passed a fringe of date palms, and led his half-troop along the far bank of a shallow, dry ditch.

  “Ready now,” he said.

  Sasan turned to his six.

  “Now I see whether you are true men,” he said in Safiri.

  Each man put his right hand to his face.

  Aranthur checked his girth and the priming on his pistols.

  “I can’t shield us like Dahlia,” he said to Sasan.

  Sasan shrugged. “Why don’t we pass them? Then come back on them like a fish-hook?”

  “Brilliant,” Aranthur said.

  “See, I’ve actually done this before.”

  Sasan rattled something in Safiri to his six, and they laughed.

  Aranthur waved a casual salute and they all mounted. They rode quickly down the long line of date palms until Aranthur, his heart in his throat, hoped they were well past the twinkle of metal. Then they followed a line of very dusty vegetation, mostly thorny scrub, back towards the road.

  “We’ve come too far.” Sasan shrugged. “Better than not far enough.”

  He smiled, like a man truly enjoying himself.

  Aranthur waited for the surge of confidence that usually came before combat, but nothing came, and he got them to the road, afraid of…

  Everything: ambush, combat, magik, traps…

  They were moving fast. There was almost no cover, and nothing but speed, and Aranthur’s pony broke into a gallop, and the Nomadi and Sasan’s “guides” followed him.

  There were men ahead, and horses. A scatter of shots, a hasty occulta turned on his aspis, and they were in among the Pindari horse, scattering them. Most never stood; they rode off, south, abandoning two circle wearers. Aranthur rode one down, turned his pony, and cut down as the sorcerer raised his staff.

  The sword went through the staff as if it was not there. Aranthur’s sword went a hand’s breadth into the man’s skull. He fell, screaming incoherently, and the sword burned him with blue-white fire.

  Aranthur turned his pony, pulling viciously at the reins, but the other sorcerer was riding away, galloping south.

  He made it to the next irrigation ditch, and then there was a volley, and all the Pindaris dropped. Vilna waved.

  Aranthur had a moment of solid satisfaction.

  Omga brought him a better horse, but Aranthur had begun to respect the pony, who, despite an ugly head and a temper like a drunk, tended to do more than Aranthur expected. They watered the horses, and he went through the dead sorcerer’s effects. He had three human hearts; Aranthur looked at them and shivered.

  Sasan was still mounted. His six had bloody sabres and looked as if they had fought.

  “Let me go east,” he said. “Those were cut out of victims not two hours ago.”

  One of the Safians, until then silent, leant forward on his mount.

  “There is a post,” he said. “Not far. Maybe a parasang.”

  Vilna shook his head. “No. My pardon, syr. But no. After the shots? And these men of yours.” He shook his head again. “No. But all of us.”

  “Preserve the hearts,” Aranthur ordered. “Leave six people here—the rest of us will drive on.”

  Vilna nodded. “Not much further, Bahadur. Horses are almost done.”

  “One parasang,” Aranthur said, indicating the Safian guide. “But not on the road.”

  Three miles later, they found the post. There were four corpses on the road, and signs of a hasty abandonment. They saw dust in the distance, and Aranthur reined in.

  “Vilna, will you pursue?” he asked.

  “And you, Centark?”

  Aranthur pointed back down the road.

  “Four bodies. So one heart is in a sorcerous trap.” He pointed behind them. “On the road. Leave me Omga.”

  Vilna watched the distant dust.

  “Ayee!” he cried, and thundered off.

  Aranthur felt very alone, even with Omga. He felt even more alone fifteen minutes later, when he detected the stigal. But Domina
’s cavalry would be coming, and he made himself go forward. His hands shook, and he took two shots to hit the focus, and even then the spell was not broken. He had to hit it again, and by then he had only three round balls left in his pouch. Then they made their way forward until they reached the stigal under the road. Aranthur walked wide of it, out into the fields, looking for an angle, but Omga was more direct. He made a grenado out of his spare cartridges, and threw it into the culvert on a javelin, with an expert flip that belied years of practice.

  The explosion was small, but it wrecked the curse, and sickly black-yellow smoke rose over the road.

  He ordered Omga to ride down the road to the column. As soon as he sent the man away, he began to worry about everything again: whether he’d just sent a trusting young nomad to his death.

  But he turned and followed Vilna.

  He didn’t have to go far. Vilna came trotting towards him, raising dust; he still had fourteen troopers.

  “We found them,” he said. “They are right there—perhaps ten hundreds of paces along road.” He grinned.

  Aranthur waved behind him.

  “I sent Omga to fetch the Tekne.”

  And to his immense relief, before the sun sank another finger’s width, the vanguard of the Second Cavalry, the Tekne, appeared with Omga riding proudly by the Centark. They were trotting.

  “We caught their rearguard,” Aranthur said. “Or rather, Vilna says it’s more of a panicked mob and some wagons.”

  Domina smiled the thin smile of a feral cat.

  “How splendid,” she said.

  He played no role in what followed—it was not a fight but a massacre. The city cavalry were more cautious than the regulars might have been, but they nonetheless captured a thousand horses and drove the enemy farther along the road, and Domina sent her reserve squadron in further pursuit. They were as ruthless as only tired, angry men and women can be, cutting their way through the enemy’s hasty camp. It was brutal, grim, and utterly one-sided.

  “Don’t fight the rest.” the centark ordered. “Just herd them along so we know where they are.”

  The enemy army—what was left of it—was breaking up in all directions. It seemed incredible; the Second City Cavalry were terribly outnumbered, but the “enemy” were now just desperate men trying to ride foundering horses away into the dusk. There wasn’t even a show of force from the enemy Magi. Four more were captured.