The Last King's Amulet pof-1

by Chris Northern

  I looked back the way we had come, the gentle empty slope of grasses crushed by our passing in lines where the dew did not show, the woodland as still as a dream, then to the north, our men strung out in vulnerable lines, and I felt suddenly ill at ease.

  “Recall the men,” I told Tulian as I joined the command group.

  He looked about. Nothing threatened. The surviving enemy were scattered and gone. Yet he nodded. Maybe there was something in my voice. The horns sounded then, too close and joined by ours as Tulian issued the order to regroup on us. Come to the banners, the horns sounded, and our men came. I was still looking back and forth at the two slopes and may have been first to see my equestes burst from the trees to the south, Sheo at the head, thundering toward us. The north slope, our men hurrying now, moving fast into centuries and at the same time in our direction. The trees behind them were suddenly alive with men. The south slope, Sheo and his equestes moving fast, half way to us. Behind them a hint of movement in the dawn light. North slope, there were thousands. All who had fled and more, bunched in a swathe as far as I cared to look east and west. South slope. Barbarians appearing in dribbles that I knew was about to turn into a flood.

  I looked at Tulian and he met my gaze. I almost saw him shrug and I knew he had no ideas.

  “The runners met the other war band as they fled,” I told him emotionlessly. “They have been calmed and turned about.” South slope. “And the third warband we heard rumor of have come on us as well.” It was clear as glass to me, our doom. Still I turned my head as I spoke. North slope, our men moving fast our way, looking for direction. Tulian, looking back at me with no idea what to do. South slope, a river of barbarians bursting its bank and Sheo closing on us fast. Tulian; still nothing.

  “Triangular formation. Mages and healers in the center with the cavalry holding the points of the triangle,” it wasn't in the books but our battle signals are good, a lot of meaning can be put into the flags and trumpets and the men were trained to react as instructed, not to think and puzzle.

  He gave orders, flag-bearers moved to their assigned spots, trumpets blew and the enemy horns and drums blended in. But things started to happen as our men reacted to the signals. I continued to look, turning my horse now, seeing with a clarity I never would have imagined possible. We would be surrounded, there was no way out, there were so many of them, we were going to lose, to die, but none of that mattered. Hurt them, hurt them now and slow them and give us time to form properly and be ready.

  “Larner Harrat! Mages, north and south, hurt them, slow them down!”

  They moved. They didn't wait. Magic looks like almost invisible sheet lightning, but with a shape and a pattern of varying size and complexity, brief flickers of brightness that catch your attention but are gone before you can focus on them. Fire rolled from their outstretched hands in great tumbling balls of red and yellow and black and struck the enemy leaving charring men still running and men whose clothing burned and whose hair was gone in an instant or who were blinded by suddenly burned eyes. Holes appeared in the teeming hoard, leaving scattered burning men in the gaps and those behind split around them as though they were stones in a river. The earth exploded in a great gout of clods of earth and men, knocking a dozen more to the ground; gods knew what that was, though I was glad of it. It wouldn't be enough but it was enough for us to form the triangle so that when they hit us we were not in disarray.

  They kept coming out of the woods, filling the slopes no matter how many the battle mages killed by fire and gas. If we had killed eight thousand and wounded a thousand more there were still as many or more than we had broken in the dark. There were too many of them.

  It was a nightmare.

  48

  The nightmare seemed to go on forever. The healers were busy and men went back into the fight without hesitation. The thrum of crossbows sounded behind me. I had forgotten them but Tulian had not. They were ranged wide, fifty facing north and fifty south. Our formation held for a while but buckled as the corners were pushed together and in. We couldn't hold for long, I thought. There was no way to hold for long.

  I looked at Tulian, and he was doing the same as me. Seeing disaster and still thinking, trying to find a way out, a way to win where none existed. The equestes milled, pushed back when the corners of the triangular formation met and the lines merged.

  “Send messengers to call the equestes in. We'll dismount and be a reserve on foot. Or just join the fight.”

  Tulian just looked at me.

  “The horses are useless.”

  He nodded, gave the order. It was true. The horses were useless. Equestes were only of use in two circumstances, the running down of a fleeing enemy and fast maneuver to counter other mounted troops. Apart from that cavalry are useless and always have been.

  We were losing men, being pushed back by sheer weight of numbers though we were hurting them badly, leaving new mounds of dead and trampled wounded. We would be crushed into a small knot and, unable to maneuver, destroyed. The sheer inevitability of it depressed me.

  When the cavalry dismounted I joined them. There was nothing else to do. Meran walked with me to join our men and I wished I had not let him come.

  Having killed in the night for the first time and slaughtered until after dawn I now faced death with a curious calm.

  It was a dream.

  49

  Everything hurt and I did not think that was fair.

  #

  I felt like I was on fire, being moved, there was light, vague images. Noise. Pain.

  #

  When you are spirit, when you are dead, it should stop hurting. No wonder the spirits didn't tell us about this. We would fear death greatly if we knew it hurt this much, was this dark. Cold. This lonely.

  #

  Wet noises and pain in my face told me I was having trouble breathing. I couldn't see and my eyes ached. After that there was a long list and I knew that it was by no means complete. I also knew I wasn't dead because I wished that I was. I was lying on something comfortable, on my side. It was cold.

  #

  The grunt was involuntarily and woke me fully from a nightmare into another one. My hand hurt, a sharp stabbing, twisting pain like I had never imagined in my most cruel nightmares. This must be what it is like to be tortured, I thought.

  “Make him live.”

  I grunted again, trying to say something but my jaw didn't work properly. Nothing did. 'No,' I had tried to say, 'just kill me quickly.'

  “As you command.”

  I recognized the voice and felt a wave of hope as I realized that the pain was about to go away. It did and so did I.

  50

  For a while I just lay on my back with my eyes open. Nothing hurt and I didn't want to move in case it started again. My breathing was easy and I didn't want to push it lest my ribs leap back into the fire-storm they had been.

  The bed was the most uncomfortable imaginable. Basically a thin sack of straw on a stone base. My hands explored it. So did my nose. It stank. So did I. I checked my body, it was fine, the cloth of my shirt was stiff, which I thought was odd but didn't think about. I turned my head. There was light coming from a corridor. Bare stone walls and a thick door. I was in a cell. In a prison. We don't have prisons, but the barbarians do. What would we need prisons for? If you are a commoner and guilty we fine you or we kill you, a noble goes into exile. Foreigners are like commoners. Why would you need a prison? A foreign noble was a guest if held against his will; guarded but still a guest. Civilization is a wonderful thing. Prisons are for barbarians.

  With care I moved my legs off the bed and sat up. Glancing down I saw why my clothes were stiff. Blood and mud and… well, other things. No wonder I stank. There was nowhere to go, but still I stood up. Dizzy and weak, I supported myself with one hand on the wall and shuffled slowly to the door. It wasn't far. There was an opening as big as my head. I couldn't resist the temptation. Outside, looking left and right a corridor of similar doors stretched away t
o end doors of different design. There were lamps attached to the walls, burning oil and casting a fair light.

  “Anyone here?” My throat was so dry that the words came out as a croaky whisper. I tried again, mustering some spit and swallowing first.

  Movement here and there, then heads began to emerge. It would have been comical. No, I smiled, almost laughed aloud, it was comical. Disembodied heads, poking through holes in doors into a well-lit corridor, blinking away tears from the added light. I looked left and right, counting and recognizing.

  “Next time stick to the plan,” Kerral said, trying to make his voice harsh and failing miserably.

  I laughed and it hurt my throat, so I stopped. I couldn't think of anything to say. Sheo, Kerral, Yebratt, Larner, Hettar, Lentro, and Gatren. I named them again in my mind, smiling foolishly.

  “Have I missed anything?”

  They laughed. We all laughed. Well, we were alive against all expectation, and whole and, most importantly, not alone.

  51

  The sudden outbreak of morale didn't last. I apologized for getting them into this state. Everyone was very good about it; not your faulting and so on but I still felt like a shit.

  Standing with our heads shoved through the doors was uncomfortable so we stopped after a while. There wasn't much to say. We were prisoners, our army destroyed. Probably not a man had survived apart from us, and it didn't take long to figure out why. Nobles carry a ransom. At least that's what we thought for an hour. After that something happened to change our minds. Someone came to visit.

  I'd been stretching, testing my body, finding out how it was. Weak, dizzy, I'd lost more weight. Memories were flashing up in my mind and I was trying not to pay attention to them. Lots of killing. Lots of getting hurt. Not fun. Nothing I wanted to remember. When I heard the key rattle in the lock of a distant door, I froze. By the time the door was open my head was out the hole and I was looking both ways. I wasn't alone. I'd explored the outside of the door with my arm stuck through the hole, nothing useful had come under my fingers. This time it was just my head. My heart lifted for a second at what I saw, then sank. The young battle mage, Ferrian, was at the end of the corridor, stepping casually through the open doorway and walking down the corridor. My heart had lifted at the sight of him but only for that moment. He wasn't alone. He was clean, well dressed, unhurt, and had two barbarians following him. He wasn't going to say anything good.

  Hettar didn't get it. “Ferrian, my boy! Get these doors open!”

  “Gladly,” the young man answered, waving one hand in an easy but meaningless gesture. A stone gleamed on one finger. “As soon as you can convince my master that you have forsaken the evil rule of the city and sworn allegiance to him.”

  The stunned silence was very effective. I broke it. “Your master?”

  My tone of voice, incredulous, accenting the word master, was lost on no one. No patron of the city acknowledged anyone as master. There were no superiors, only equals of one's own class. The very idea was shocking, horrifying, and utterly impossible. He couldn't mean it.

  But he did.

  “Kukran Epthel has opened my eyes to the evil the city represents, taught me the error of my thinking, given me belief in a better way, a new dawn of man that will see the old evil of the city ground into dust and scattered like ashes.” The fever in his eyes was that of the convert, his voice rising and falling in cadence of remembered speeches, the hallmarks of the non-thinker, the faith holder, the madman, and I stopped listening. He wasn't going to say anything rational, but that didn't worry me. What frightened me was that he wasn't going to do anything rational either.

  Hettar made the mistake of interrupting him. “What are you talking about boy? Did you take a blow to the head?”

  Ferrian had been pacing up and down the corridor as he spoke, looking at each of us as he passed. He took one long pace and struck the old man a blow with his fist that snapped his head to one side, his neck thumping into the wood of the door. “Like this?” Hettar tried to pull back at once but it was a second blow that sent him from sight. I heard him fall. At the end of the corridor the two barbarians laughed, harshly. “A blow to the head like that, old man? No,” he turned back to the rest of his seemingly rapt audience, “it was no blow that opened my eyes but the wise words of a kind and thoughtful man. I see what you are, you greedy, cruel, evil petty men, seeking only your own ends, without thought to the price others pay for your actions. Your slaves outnumber yourselves! Your oppression stretches a thousand miles, beyond even the borders you choose to hold! Seven centuries you have marched where you will, destroyed what you chose, looted with impunity, stolen away men and women and children from their loved ones and damned them to lives of brutal slavery!” He was working himself up into a rage.

  “Not all of us keep slaves,” I said mildly.

  He froze, turned slowly on his heel and came to stand in front of me, eyes bulging, breath heaving. “You!” He spat the word, then took several breaths, calming himself visibly. “You freed a slave, just recently. I remember. It was the talk of the camp. They ridiculed you. Mocked your kindness. They called you weak, said they would never serve such a fool.” His voice was raising again.

  “I didn't do it for them.”

  “No. You did it because it was the right thing to do! No man should be a slave to another!”

  I nodded. Trying to keep him calm. “What does your master want?”

  He turned sharply away. “You will teach him and his acolytes how to use stone. You will teach him how to use magic. And that magic will aid us in bringing down the city and sharing its bounty amongst the oppressed that we will set free!”

  He went on, working himself up into a rage again. I glanced around from face to face of my companions, seeing what I felt, what I already knew. They would teach him nothing and we would all die here.

  “Pick one!” The guards were getting bored with his diatribe.

  “Him!” He stabbed out an arm, ramrod straight, pointing at Gatren.

  The young man's eyes widened but he didn't let his fear show more than it must. His face paled and he withdrew his head into his cell, knowing it would make no difference. I didn't envy him. We don't have torture chambers – sorcerers can cast a truth spell at need – but we know what they are.

  52

  We remained silent a good while after they had gone.

  “Well, on the whole I think that went rather well.”

  Kerral laughed at my shabby attempt at humor, a couple of the others snorted laughs but couldn't make them stick.

  “Hettar! Are you all right?” Larner called out to his fellow battle mage.

  “Not good.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  Hettar reappeared at his door, pushing his head through the hole and turning to look down the corridor at us. The old man's nose was broken and blood covered his face. “He's crazy, one way or another.”

  “Is he acting do you think?”

  Hettar shook his head after a moment's consideration. “No. He's been broken some way. Broken and remade.”

  “Does anyone know the name Kukran Epthel?”

  Lots of shaking heads sticking through doors. I tried not to laugh, wondering if my humor was a hysterical reaction. This wasn't going to go anywhere good for any of us. “I guess the chances of ransom are minimal.”

  Another laugh from Kerral. “Well, we still have our health.”

  That got them. “And our sanity,” Sheo chipped in, his laughter sounding slightly mad.

  The laughter didn't last long. It couldn't.

  “I assume we are all agreed not to tell them anything?” Larner was looking at me.

  “I was trying to calm him,” I snapped. “Sorry. Look, Meran became a friend. I don't know how that happened exactly but I treated him shabbily for years and he did a good job anyway, looked after me, was always ahead of my needs so I never had to ask for anything. Hell, I liked him and I wanted to do something for him just in case… Well,
this happened.” I fell silent and no one commented. It hadn't done him much good, I reflected. No freemen sons or daughters to follow him. “Do you think they killed everyone?”

  “I wish they had,” Hettar spat.

  I nodded agreement. It would be better. My sister would continue the family name; father could still have other sons. Better if I were dead. If I were I wouldn't have to live through what was doubtless to come.

  “I'm going to sleep,” I said and pulled my head back into my cell.

  “Good luck with that.” It was Sheo, but I was done laughing for now.

  53

  I had my head back through the door. It was better to have company.

  “How much does Ferrian know?” Sheo asked the question.

  The mages Larner and Hettar exchanged guarded glances.

  “How much damage can he do us?” Sheo rephrased the question more insistently. “I'm not asking for your secrets!”

  Larner nodded and Hettar answered. “Not as much as we do, by a wide margin. He has ball of fire, the mustard cloud, bolt of lightning, earthquake; plus shock and some other personal offense spells.”

  “Earthquake?” I asked.

  “To bring down walls, localized but can be large if you have enough stone.”

  I wanted to wave him to silence because I knew what he meant now. Whole cities had been leveled with that spell in the past. I knew it from history and my studies of war.

  “Has he enough stone? How many stones do they have?”

  Larner and Hettar exchanged glances again. “The largest was ten carats.”