by Ari Marmell
Losalis stepped forward. “Actually, my lord, we only became aware of the issue yesterday, and it was just this morning that we brought it to Seilloah’s attention.”
“You only realized yesterday that someone’s been murdering my soldiers?”
“My lord, this is the first body we’ve found. Up until now, they were just vanishing. One man from this company, another from that squad … It took us this long to realize there was anything unusual. A handful of men, it could simply have been desertion, off whoring, or maybe drunken stupor. We didn’t pick up on a pattern until I happened to discuss it with a few of the other commanders.”
“I see. It should still have been brought to my attention the instant I arrived.”
The witch frowned. “Corvis, you were—”
“Silence!”
Seilloah flinched as though struck. Davro scowled.
“Losalis, as soon as the men are organized, this is your first priority. I want you to find out who’s killing the men, and I want it stopped.”
“Of course, my lord.”
“You’re dismissed.”
Seilloah stood rigid until the door clicked shut behind the departing warrior. Then, stiffly, she said, “If you’re quite through with me, I’ll be retiring to my own quarters. Or have I not been dismissed?”
The warlord opened his mouth to retort and just as quickly snapped it shut again.
“Seilloah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bark at you. It’s just, I’ve been here less than a day, Audriss isn’t even here, and I’ve already got people dying on me.” Wearily, he pulled the chair from the desk and fell into it. “This is a lot more stressful than I remembered,” he admitted. “I don’t know if I’m cut out for this anymore.”
/If you can’t handle it, Corvis, I’ll be more than happy to assume command./
“Over my dead body, Khanda.”
/That’s a thought …/
Seilloah forced her expression to thaw. “It’s all right, Corvis,” she said calmly—so calmly, in fact, that Corvis was quite certain it was anything but. “I understand.”
“Maybe,” Davro growled, “but I don’t. You know what you are, Corvis?”
“No, Davro,” Corvis said, rising again to his feet. “Why don’t you tell me?”
But the ogre never did tell him. The door to the room crashed open and Losalis hurtled back in, his expression bleak.
“What is it?” Corvis said, his blood running cold.
“I think you’d better come with me, my lord,” Losalis told him grimly. “Some of the men were looking for room to set up more distant encampments. They spotted what appears to be an advance guard coming down the main road from the east.
“You’d better have a fairly spectacular plan to give the unit commanders, my lord. If his advance scouts are this close already, the main body of Audriss’s army can’t be more than three days away.”
THOSE THREE DAYS were frenetic. Vorringar sat at one of the largest crossroads of the King’s Highway, and it was designed to encourage travelers, not keep them out. It simply never occurred to the original settlers that Vorringar might ever be required to withstand a siege. Corvis’s soldiers did what they could to rectify the situation, but it wasn’t much.
The men placed heaps of rubble at regular intervals around the perimeter of the town, piled between four and six feet high, made up of stone and wood “conscripted” from the town’s larger buildings and furniture. (They cut down only a few of the nearby trees, as they provided good natural protection to the south.) These sad bulwarks, intended to provide some degree of cover from the advancing horde, were marginally better than nothing but didn’t remotely make up for the lack of a defensive wall.
They’d quickly excavated a ditch, shallow but steep, around the town just beyond the makeshift barriers. Jagged wooden shafts jutted from the earth within the moat, and local bracken and thorn bushes were draped across the stakes and scattered throughout the trench. A man on foot could easily pick his way through, but it would slow him down enough for Rebaine’s archers to have their way with him, and it made a cavalry charge unthinkable. Vorringar’s citizens grudgingly allowed themselves to be pressed into service as messengers and porters. They carried arrows and bolts by the bushel, for use by the defending archers. They carefully positioned barrels of pitch, in case the defenders felt the need to start fires, and barrels of water, in case they needed to extinguish any. Any spare iron—rusty nails, old horseshoes, rakes and hoes—was melted down into twisted and jagged bits that should function as crude caltrops. Hundreds of these were promptly scattered across the width of the highway.
Corvis bitterly lamented the lack of siege weaponry, but he knew that no catapult or ballista could be built from raw materials in the time available.
Their position, he admitted to himself, was untenable. Vorringar was hideously vulnerable, and while Davro and Seilloah had done a remarkable job in finding men to fight, they were outnumbered five to one. The ogres would help to even those odds a bit, but even they were too few to tip such a massive imbalance.
“It could be worse,” Corvis muttered on the evening of the third day.
“That so?” Davro grumbled irritably. “Enlighten me.”
The warlord, along with Davro and Seilloah, was standing atop the town hall, with a good view of the eastern edge of town. They watched as the men strove to finish the last of the defenses. The reek of sour sweat and wood dust enveloped them all, made bearable only because the temperature had finally dropped to more autumn-appropriate levels. Corvis, his shadow stretching out before him as it was rudely shoved by the rays of the setting sun, stared at the approaching tide of flesh and blood and sharpened steel.
The Serpent had arrived.
The enemy made camp less than half a mile from Vorringar, outside the effective range of the archers but not beyond the reach of siege engines. Even now, in the last light of dusk, Corvis heard faint sounds of trees being felled and wood being sawed in the first stages of construction. By the end of the week, boulders the size of yaks would rain down on the unprotected town unless something happened to stop it.
“I wouldn’t question your judgment for the world, my lord,” Losalis said softly, appearing on the rooftop, “but choosing Vorringar as our staging area might not have been the most tactically sound option.”
Corvis grinned a hollow grin. “Is that a political way of telling your employer that he’s an idiot?”
“Not at all, sir. I don’t believe for one moment that you’re an idiot.” He paused. “You may have done something idiotic, but that doesn’t inherently make you an idiot.”
It would probably have been in character for the Terror of the East to grow furious at that point, but Corvis decided that he didn’t have the patience for posturing. “All right, maybe. I wasn’t familiar with Vorringar’s layout or defensive position—or lack thereof. I underestimated the time it would take Audriss to get here. I’m sorry. It’s been almost twenty years since I’ve done this, you know.
“On the other hand,” he continued before anyone could get a word in, “it’s not quite as bad as it looks. Audriss can’t afford to just swarm us under. Even with such crude fortifications, the advantage in a short-term siege goes to the defender. He’ll suffer a hideous number of casualties trying to take this town.”
“Will that stop him, though?” Seilloah asked pointedly. “Audriss doesn’t strike me as all that concerned with the health of his men.”
“No, Lord Rebaine’s right,” Losalis said thoughtfully. “If Audriss is trying to conquer Imphallion, then regardless of what else happens, he’s got to take Mecepheum.”
Corvis nodded. “Exactly.”
“I’m afraid I still don’t follow,” Seilloah admitted.
“Audriss is already fighting a war of attrition,” Losalis explained. “Every city he takes, no matter how efficiently, costs him lives—the soldiers he loses, and the garrisons he has to leave behind. And the closer he gets to Mecepheum, the more org
anized his opposition becomes. Even if Lorum hasn’t whipped the Guildmasters into cooperation yet, that’s going to change when an invading horde appears near the capital. The army of Imphallion itself isn’t that large, but put it together with the soldiers of the individual lords and the Guilds, you’ve got an impressive fighting force.”
The witch nodded, comprehension dawning. “Which means Audriss can’t afford to fight us here, right? Even if he wins, he’d lose too many men to have a chance later on.”
“Exactly,” Corvis said, his eyes once more going eastward, where only the campfires of the enemy were now visible in the growing darkness. “Stalemate.”
“For a week,” Davro added. “Then they start dropping small mountains on us.”
“And we’ve still got someone murdering our soldiers,” Seilloah pointed out. “We can’t afford to grow complacent.”
“Do I look complacent?” Corvis asked with a scowl.
/No,/ Khanda interjected. /Just ugly./
“That’s another thing,” the warlord continued. “Magic.”
“Are you and I taking on the armies by ourselves?” Seilloah asked sardonically.
“Not exactly. Tell me, can you manipulate the forest out there the way you did in Theaghl-gohlatch?”
Losalis’s eyes widened slightly. “You’ve been through Theaghl-gohlatch?”
“I live there,” Seilloah said. “I’d be there now if someone who shall remain nameless hadn’t found it convenient to drop by uninvited.”
“I’d hardly call it convenient, Seilloah,” Corvis objected.
“You’re the witch, then?” the warrior asked. “The one who kills all those who enter the forest?”
“I don’t know that I’m the witch. I’m a witch. And most people foolish enough to venture into Theaghl-gohlatch are slain by the natives long before they get anywhere near my little stretch of property.” A sudden suspicion washed over her. “Why do you ask?”
“I think you may have eaten someone I know.”
“I don’t suppose anyone would care to talk about the imminent war?” Davro snapped.
“Probably a good idea,” Corvis said blandly. “Seilloah, you didn’t answer my question.”
“Hmm?” She thought back a minute. “Oh, that. Not as well, I’m afraid. I’m not familiar with those woods out there, whereas I know Theaghl-gohlatch like the back of my hand. Plus, my home has a certain—propensity—toward magic to begin with. But I could probably work some fairly impressive tricks with the flora, if that’s what you were asking.”
“It is indeed. I want accidents to happen while Audriss’s people are gathering firewood and cutting lumber. Lots and lots of accidents. I want wood to warp while they’re building with it. I want the wolves and owls to decide those men taste better than the local rodent population.”
“You don’t ask much, do you? I can’t give you all that, but I’ll do what I can. I can slow them down a little, at least.”
“Every little bit helps. As for—”
/Corvis!/
“Is this really the time, Khanda? I—”
/This is important, you gibbering baboon!/
Sigh. “Fine, Khanda, what is it?”
/Audriss has magic equal to yours. In fact, he’s got a demon-inhabited talisman very much like me./
The Terror of the East felt the blood congeal in his veins. “How do you know?” he asked tightly.
/Because it just delivered a message to me./
By now Corvis’s companions had all fallen statue-still, staring at the expression on their leader’s face. “Corvis,” Seilloah began, “what—”
Corvis shook his head. “What message, Khanda?”
/Probably the one you already suspect, O bony one. Audriss wants to meet with you. Alone./
Chapter Sixteen
It wasn’t remotely the fanciest place she’d ever stayed, even on the road, but it was certainly comfortable enough. Clean rooms, fresh linens, a minimum of scuttling insects in the corners, and the sawdust on the common room floor was fresh enough to hide all the other, less appetizing aromas of the tavern. It was the … What? Sixth inn they’d stayed at? Seventh? She’d lost track, thanks in part to her “companion’s” urgent desire to keep moving.
Tyannon sank down to sit on the straw-stuffed mattress and stared blankly at the far wall, trying to make even a little bit of sense of the past days.
She was clad in a brand-new blouse and skirt, an outfit that thankfully did not smell of the smoke and blood of Denathere’s agonized death throes. A plate of cold venison sat beside her, a mug of ale on the floor at her feet. She was clean, she was well fed, the incidental scrapes and abrasions she’d picked up in that basement had been carefully, even gently, tended. Were it not for the manacle around her ankle and the attached chain that allowed her full run of the room but not to step across the threshold, she might almost have thought of this as a normal night away from home.
Well, the manacle and the man who was even now laying a blanket on the floor across the room, having insisted—again—that she take the only bed.
He looked so normal out of that horrific suit of armor. Just another fellow, his dark hair speckled with bits of premature grey, his face sprouting the first shoots of what might, if left unchecked, blossom into a full beard. Only his eyes, pools as deep as any sea, suggested he was anything more.
“Not hungry?” Rebaine asked, gesturing at the untouched plate. He’d been strangely solicitous—almost shy, even—since he’d taken her. Tyannon was all but positive that the warlord really hadn’t the slightest idea of what to actually do with her.
“No.” She flinched, drawn from her thoughts, to stare at the—man? monster?—across from her. “I’m still full from lunch.”
“You barely touched lunch.”
Tyannon shrugged.
“As you like,” he sighed, not so much angry as resigned. “I’ll make sure we get a big breakfast before we head out in the morning.” He watched her, his mouth occasionally twitching as though to say something more, but whatever words he carried got lost somewhere on the way to his lips.
/Maybe she’s trying to starve herself to death,/ Khanda offered. /She’d be doing you a favor, you know./
Corvis ignored him. Again.
“All right.” He began the litany that had been their lullaby since leaving Denathere. “No noise. No calls for help, no hidden messages. Anyone you attract—”
“Yes, I know!” Tyannon’s fists suddenly clenched. “Anyone I attract, you’re going to have to kill! Anyone who realizes who you are, or that I don’t want to be with you, is a threat! And no, I don’t want to get anyone else killed! How many bloody times do you think I have to hear it?” It was more words than she’d strung together at any given time since she’d confronted him beneath the Hall of Meeting.
Corvis blinked twice. “I, uh, just want to make sure we understand each other.”
“Oh, I understand you, Rebaine.” And then she straightened, her face all but lighting up. “I do understand,” she said, her voice suddenly soft but far more firm than Corvis had ever heard it. “You’re trying to keep me afraid.”
/Kill her./
“That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what you’re all about.”
/Kill her, Corvis! Kill her now!/
“What do you mean?” Corvis asked, almost despite himself, rising to stand before her. She rose, too, though of course she could not match his height.
“Your armies, your monsters, your armor—it’s all about fear. It’s how you keep control.”
“Well … Yes,” he admitted. “It is.”
/Have you gone completely insane?! Don’t talk to her about this!/
“You may not believe it, Tyannon, you may think I’m a monster, but this was never about hurting anyone more than I had to.”
The girl actually laughed, though it was a brittle, bitter sound. “You hung body parts along the streets where their families lived!”
“As you just said: fear. Tell
me something, Tyannon. How many people didn’t rise up to fight me because they were too afraid of what I’d do to them? How many more lives would I have had to take?”
“You can’t rule a nation that way!”
“Not indefinitely, no. But you can take one.”
“Can you? Funny, I don’t see a crown on your head.”
/Corvis, this is getting dangerous …/
“It was for the best, Tyannon. If you’re with me long enough, maybe you’ll under—”
The room literally echoed with the report of her slap. Corvis Rebaine, Terror of the East, actually staggered back, one hand rising to his stinging cheek, and damn if tears didn’t come to his eyes! Oh, he’d have liked to shrug it off, to pretend he’d just been startled … But it would’ve been a lie. Damn, the girl could hit!
“What was … What did … What?” he stammered.
“You’re a fraud. A pompous, deluded fool trying to convince himself he did the right thing.” Tyannon wasn’t sure where the courage had come from, any more than she’d known why she’d suddenly mouthed off to the black-armored warlord back in Denathere. But she knew she had to ride it while it lasted. “What do you do when someone’s not afraid of you anymore? What then?”
Rebaine’s eyes narrowed. “I’d be careful, if I were you, Tyannon. I—”
“You’ll what? You need me, Rebaine. That’s the whole reason I’m here, remember? Maybe I can’t afford to draw attention to us, because I don’t want to get anyone else hurt—but you can’t afford to hurt me, either.”
“I won’t need you indefinitely,” he growled. “Remember?”
“I remember. And then you’ll either let me go, like you promised you would, or you’ll kill me because I irritated you. And that’ll pretty much put the lie to who you pretend to be, won’t it?” Tyannon didn’t even wait for a reply; she simply shoved the plate of meat to the floor and curled up in bed, facing away from her openmouthed captor.