“You’ll just ride into the lion’s den,” she said.
“Yes. We cut the corner of the Safian Plains, and cross the Kuh at its narrowest. We come out opposite Al-Khaire and I’ll put your message on a boat. It races downriver and out through the northern Delta—your messenger will be on the dock at Antioke a day later.”
“If you aren’t all killed, or better yet, captured by the Pure,” the General said. “But that is very fast, I agree.” She leant over. “I’m worried for Atti and for Masr, too. I’ll wager you a golden crown against a dirty glove that this ‘Master’ only intended the army we defeated to make trouble—a giant raid, if you like.”
“Why?” Qna Liras asked.
“A hunch, no more. But look at the composition—all those Pindaris, all the Safian cavalry, and yet very little disciplined infantry and almost no artillery.” She shook her head. “He plays a deep game, this ‘Master.’ He doesn’t expect every army to win. He has another army, or two, with all the better troops.” She looked up at Qna Liras.
The Magos nodded. “The amount of sihr that their casters exerted controlling and enhancing the mob of refugees and captives they used as shock troops,” he said, waving one hand. “They were effective, and they shocked our militia. But it was incredibly wasteful of power.”
“And yet they virtually destroyed my magikal staff,” the General said. “I can’t face a major action again until I have replaced all my casters.”
Tribane glanced at Aranthur.
“You’ll need a escort,” she said.
They rose before the sun. Aranthur was moved to find that Equus got up to see them off; the Nomadi officer embraced him.
“You’re taking my best man,” he said with an easy smile. “See that you bring Vilna back.”
Aranthur smiled. “He’s more likely to bring me home.”
Vilna said nothing. This morning, he and six of his troopers were dressed in Steppe clothes with no vestige of uniform: caribou-hide khaftans carefully painted with intricate designs, cotton trousers and short, soft boots. Most of them wore fur hats of various degrees of shapelessness.
All seven of them were armed to the teeth, with multiple puffers, lances, swords, bows; Vilna himself had a small axe and his saddlebow, and Chimeg had a lasso of woven horsehair. Aranthur himself had given up his sweat-stained fustanella and his red military turban for a silk khaftan borrowed from Equus and a black lambskin kulah. Sasan’s ruffians wore the usual selection of outlandish Pindari dress. Dahlia had joined them; she was tall enough to vanish among them, and she was a fine rider. Prince Ansu, on the other hand, had chosen to consult Vilna. He appeared as an Eastern Steppe nomad, except for the long and outlandishly curved sword he wore at his belt.
Only Qna Liras was unchanged. He wore a Byzas velvet coat, and his own long hair in a thousand braids tumbling down his back. But he had a robe—an enormous Bethuin robe—that he promised to put on if circumstances arose.
“I have other ways of avoiding conflict,” he said.
All of them had multiple horses. Four days of victorious pursuit had filled the army’s picket lines with spare horses, and every person had two remounts, carefully chosen.
At the last moment, General Tribane appeared. She was plainly dressed, already booted and spurred.
“Listen, Aranthur,” she said. “You need to get my dispatches into Antioke at the earliest moment. But there’s more to this little jaunt. Sasan says you will have to cross the Farach Plain to reach Masr—Qna Liras agrees. I need to know…” She looked around. “I need to know everything. Literally, everything. You will be the first exploratores into Safi for…” She shrugged. “Many years. I leave it to you—both as an officer and as a sword of Cold Iron. Go to Safi, on to Masr, report back to me. Take my messages into Antioke and return—any of those, or all of them. You will have to make many decisions. I need to make decisions too—whether to stay in the field or keep retreating, for example.”
“How would I find you?” Aranthur asked quietly.
“Qna Liras has ways to communicate with me. But here is a pair of our communications sticks. You understand—the enemy seems to be able to manipulate them. I assume they’re still good for one message. I may be wrong.”
Aranthur took them. They were bright gold, and he slipped them into the lining of his hat.
She smiled at him. “I wish I was going with you. A simple, terrifying scout, instead of an endless profusion of choices. I’m not sure that I love command.”
“You won a great battle.”
She smiled, but the smile never reached her eyes.
“Praise me when we are home. I am afraid of everything now.” She was looking at the anvil-shaped patch of starless darkness now visible with the first flush of dawn. “Get you gone. Before I desert my army and go with you.” She held out her hand. “Tell Vicar Dukaz at Antioke that I will come, if I can. Tell him that. It may matter.”
She squeezed his hand, and suddenly Aranthur wondered what it was she wasn’t telling him.
He mounted Ariadne, saluted the General and Equus, and then they rode away, east, into the hazy dawn, pink as hope, with the black scar of the rift marring it.
Aranthur had been over the ground twice, and he led them for most of the first day: south, along the ridges to the former Attian camp, and then another day due east again to Al-Bayab. The Attian army had decamped, but there were still patrols of their light cavalry, and at Al-Bayab, one of their beys remained encamped. Aranthur’s little troop was well fed on stolen mutton and regaled with ghost stories at a roaring campfire.
“There are no people!” one woman said in broken Armean. “The bastards slaughtered the whole population.”
“Bullshit,” said an older Attian. “They all live in my street now, in Ulama.”
The Attians laughed, but Aranthur sensed that the empty country oppressed them.
The next day they rode away south before the anvil could be seen in the sky. When they passed the vedettes of the Attian Delhis they were beyond the very farthest reach of the allies, riding into a land that was at best hostile.
At first the countryside was utterly deserted. Vilna had riders out at the edge of their sight all the time, and he rotated them often. Aranthur rode with the leaders on the road, with Dahlia, looking for signs of sihr. The rest of the little column followed them, and Qna Liras brought up the rear, apparently lost in thought.
They rode a day, and then another, and the mountains didn’t seem to grow any closer.
But on the third day out of Al-Bayab, when the sun was high in the sky, they began to climb.
Sasan waved. “This is the Low Pass. We call it Devea-Boyoun, the Neck of the Camel.”
Aranthur would have sworn his friend sat straighter.
“Aya!” shouted one of Sasan’s brigands. “So we will live to see home again! I never thought it.”
The former Pindaris and the Safian outriders were beginning to achieve acceptance from the Nomadi; they felt it, and spoke up more. Some of them began to be individuals, to Aranthur. Haran was big, bold, outspoken, a little too clever. ’Asid was silent and haunted, his long nose and heavily scarred face more full of sorrow than Aranthur would have expected in a bravo. Kalij and Hissin were hard men who spoke only to curse, and yet could make men smile. But despite Vilna’s constant warnings, Aranthur thought that they were loyal to Sasan.
The dusty plain gave way to hills. Among the hills was more and more water, and then the hills themselves were steeper and grass covered. There were still no people—just cairns of stone—but as they climbed, there were signs of life: a pair of sheep on a hillside; a big buck sprinting across open ground at the edge of some woods.
Vilna took the buck as a good sign. Indeed, all the Nomadi made a sign over their hearts with a closed hand. At Vilna’s order, they dismounted and gathered birch bark and firewood and loaded the spare horses.
After the high woods, the road had become a track, but the ground was easy on a horse’s hooves, and t
hey made good time. Ahead, the grassy hills suddenly became a wall of stone.
“This used to be a smugglers’ route,” Sasan said. “Too steep for wagons.”
“You said this was the low pass…” Aranthur said. The weight of command was heavier than armour.
“There is a high pass, off to the north another sixty parasangs.” Sasan smiled, pointing at the wall of stone. “And then the Great Gates, even farther north, at the edge of the Altai.”
They climbed. Horses tired and they all changed, and climbed, over grass-covered slopes and then between two spectacular cliffs, each surmounted by rows of statues so high above them that Aranthur could not make out what they were.
“This is the low pass?” he asked again.
He couldn’t see the top, or a break in the massive cliffs that towered ahead. It looked as if their little valley was a dead end.
Sasan shrugged. “The pass turns at Ilija. You cannot see the top yet, but it’s not bad. I’m more concerned that the old fortress is manned, or that there will be patrols. I rather hoped we’d find some tribal people. This area should be full of sheep, and nomads driving them. They know ways around the fortress. Bethuin, for example.”
They rode on, into the afternoon. The air grew cooler. The last trees fell away behind, and when Aranthur looked back he could see the carpet of Armea spread behind him, gold and brown and green all the way to the river halfway across the plain. Due south, the walls of the Zagan Mountains rose like a monster’s teeth, barring the road to Masr.
At mid-evening, the scouts returned. After a hasty consultation, Aranthur agreed to Vilna’s plan that they camp in a shallow depression above the road. The dimple commanded a long view up the pass, but might conceal a small fire.
Aranthur had the uncomfortable experience of having Sasan and Dahlia and Vilna all look at him, waiting for him to make a decision that each of them might have been better suited to make. Dahlia was a Byzas aristocrat and a natural leader. Sasan knew the terrain best of any of them. Vilna had led a thousand patrols.
Why am I in command? he asked himself, but the answer was obvious.
Because the General told them I was in command.
He acceded to Vilna’s plan gravely, trying not to laugh at himself, and they rode into the little dell. Immediately, the Nomadi troopers dismounted. The horses were picketed, and Omga began to curry them all while Chimeg and two other troopers took cooking gear off a packhorse.
“We’ll need food in two days.” Vilna took a filthy clay pipe from his khaftan and began to fill it with stock.
“If we sent a pair of riders out now…” Aranthur began.
Vilna actually smiled, the corners of his mouth rising to interrupt the thousand ridges of his wrinkled face.
“Very good,” he said.
“I’ll go,” Aranthur said.
Vilna frowned. “No. Never.”
He turned and spoke a dozen syllables in one of the Steppe dialects, and two of the Nomadi troopers, without so much as a shrug, grabbed ponies and rode out, headed up the pass.
Sasan watched them go.
“Even my people fear them,” he said. “How did your emperor ever acquire their loyalty?”
“History, habit, and rich rewards,” Aranthur said. “I did a little Steppe history at school. I wish I spoke even a little of their language.”
Chimeg was gutting a rabbit that had miraculously appeared.
“I’ll teach you,” she said. “This is typpan.”
She pointed at the rabbit. Then she began pointing at various objects and naming them.
Qna Liras sat on his saddle, looking back into the vast bowl of the Armean plain. He, too, had an old clay pipe, and he was filling it.
“They have a dozen languages.” He pushed the stock into the bowl of his pipe and lit it with a coal, like any other person, instead of with power.
Aranthur watched him inhale the smoke.
“I take it we should not be casting,” he said.
Vilna paused, his own pipe unlit.
Qna Liras shrugged. “Probably safe enough here. But why take a risk? The more empty these lands are, the more likely we are to be seen when we play with forces.”
Aranthur was fascinated. It was like having one of his professors all to himself.
“Is magik easier to hide in a crowd?”
Qna Liras shrugged again, and lay back on the pile of cut turf blocks that Sasan’s men had generated when they dug the fire pit.
“When we manipulate saar, we toy with life forces. When we are surrounded by life, it’s easier to mask.”
Aranthur, who was growing accustomed to keeping his magesight engaged almost all day, had already arrived at a similar notion. When he looked for sihr, for example, it showed up as bright splotches of purple-brown on a monochromatic world. The sihr itself could “light” surfaces around it; a cursed artifact, like the traps that had been laid for them, could radiate a sort of “unlight” that he could “see,” although the whole concept was allegorical.
Dahlia had a skin of wine and she poured some for each of them and then sat gracefully, like a Safian, her legs crossed.
“So, are the Pure clearing the lands around them to more easily detect intruders?” she asked.
Qna Liras narrowed his eyes. “That is a very disturbing thought. But I suspect it is more of a by-product than an intent. The chaos at the wavefronts of their assaults empties whole regions. People cannot live in the midst of a war. The Pure have been quite efficient at driving a wave of people before them.” He sat back and smoked. “It is much easier to conquer an empty land. Perhaps to put a more trustworthy population into it.” He nodded. “I will consider this.”
“How can we know so little?” she asked.
“They strike very quickly, with a maximum of shock and horror. They drive off the population, who carry with them a message of defeat and confusion.” Qna Liras shook his head. “We only noticed them two years ago. And I confess that I still don’t understand where they came from.”
Sasan looked away. “Two years ago.”
Vilna reached in and took a twig and lit his pipe.
“Where did these Pure come from?” he asked. “Not the Steppe, I promise you.”
The sun was setting, and Qna Liras’ black eyes seemed to glitter with reflected light.
“Another excellent question,” he said. “I’ll give you another. Who is the Master? I’d wager he’s one of us.”
“Us?” Dahlia asked.
“I’m wondering who you imagine ‘us’ to be,” Ansu mocked. “An Arnaut student, a Zhouian royal, a Safian poet, a Masran priest, and a Byzas aristo…”
Even Dahlia laughed. And the Lightbringer joined them.
“And yet, we all get along well enough, do we not? Because we share the teachings of Tirase. We share the generations of work done by our scholars, whether in Zhou or in Safi—the grimoires and the logic exercises. Look at a hundred Magi, and you will see that they have more in common with each other than with their supposed cultures.”
Ansu made a face. “Perhaps. But what does this tell us?”
“That the Master knows us well. He knows our societies and their many flaws. He is not an alien entity attacking from outside. He’s a worm eating from the inside. He has looked us over like a man buying a horse, and he is attacking at the weakest points.” He smoked, and looked at them over his pipe. “Let me ask another question. What are these Exalted and Disciples? Are they truly some sort of alien?”
“Assuming that we reject that they are actually disciples from a higher being…” Aranthur said.
“Assuming that,” Qna Liras said.
The next morning, a pair of riders went out at first light, and then another pair, riding close around the camp. Half an hour later, they were all mounted, moving along the track towards the top of the pass.
After an hour’s ride, they came to a small town: a dozen roofless stone houses, as many burned shells of wooden houses, and the soot-blackened remnan
t of what had once been a fine blue temple shaped like an onion’s top.
“Yezziri,” Sasan said, and one of his men made a sign, like a new moon, with his fingers.
“Yezziri?” Aranthur asked.
“Worshippers of the Sacred Fire. An old religion—older than the Lady or even the Twelve. They live in the mountains. I have been to their festivals, in happier days. They put the statues on the hillsides, and they carved the great runes you’ll see at the height of the pass.”
“No bodies,” Chimeg reported. “No corpses.”
And they rode on.
Just before noon, they descended a steep and rocky ridge into a high valley, and crossed a river that, even at the height of summer, ran swiftly over gravel and round stones. The arched stone bridge of three spans was broken and blackened with eldritch fire that had burned away a portion of the stone. Qna Liras spent several minutes running his hands over the stone as he sang a song.
It took them an hour to cross—the horses feared the water, and the Nomadi muttered.
“Malas,” Chimeg spat. She pointed her riding whip at the fire-burned stone.
Vilna spoke sharply to her, and then turned to Aranthur.
“They say the water is cursed.”
Aranthur rode in close, and looked into the water. So did Dahlia. He cast; Vilna flinched.
Dahlia shook her head. “Tell them that it is very, very difficult to maintain any kind of occulta in running water.” To Aranthur, very quietly, she said, “I thought we weren’t casting?”
“I have to keep up my sight.” He shrugged.
Dahlia crossed her hands on the cantle of her saddle and leant forward.
“True enough.” She glanced at him. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
Aranthur looked around at the massive cliff ahead, the mountains, the sheer grandeur of the scenery, and the thirty men and all their horses.
“No,” he said.
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