“Then what am I supposed to do? I have orders to take Dothoro.”
“Do those orders really matter to you?”
“No. But I must at least try, as much for my reputation as for my head.”
“Your reputation? Trying to lose will destroy your reputation, so it can’t possibly matter that much to you.” Nasheem thought for a moment, stroking the thick beard that grew along his jaw. He nodded to himself. “Go to your friends in the forest and ask if they will accommodate you with pitched battle north of the river. If they will, march your whole strength in along southern shore. The Cardor’s width will give you an advantage, if your numbers haven’t given you one already. You should have enough time to get those Ringlords on whom your favour rests out of your lines and into the surrounding forest before Edya Reeshnar and those like her set upon your army. If they can stop you, they can do it regardless of the battle’s location.”
“You said you didn’t want your soldiers sacrificed.”
“This will give me the perfect excuse to start a small war with Karvieck. These are my men he’s wasting, so Caladea seems like a reasonable price. Yes, I think that that might make this sacrifice worthwhile. After this, you will return to An-Aniath with any army you have left.”
“The Remnant will think that I am betraying them if I march in strength.”
“It is easy enough to lie to them. The Seven walk in Anaria. When they question you, as I don’t doubt that they will, you will tell them the truth. One of the Seven ‘improved’ your plans.”
With that, Nasheem stood up. He warped the world around him and was gone before Makret could speak again.
“No one ‘improves’ my plans.” Makret had needed to say something.
He got up and started walking, breathing hard and wondering why one of the Seven Devils, why Nasheem himself, had revealed the true name of the most feared and hated enemy of the Morschen … to him? What it meant, Makret thought he would never know. He did know one thing, and that was that he had business in the forest. Gelinia Eshtarin was waiting for him at the edge of the camp. In the black of night, the two were almost invisible. Even Erygan Dalrey would have a hard time seeing them tonight.
*
Two Drogs escorted Makret and Gelinia to Daliana and Edya. Makret noticed that no one in the small camp trusted him yet, but several Drogs recognized Gelinia as the Lord General of the Crystal Sword. Edya had met the woman once, in Agrista, before Taren had destroyed the city.
“Did you really have to come tonight, Druoth?”
“Yes, Daliana, I did.” The taught lines around Makret’s mouth caught Edya’s attention. They had not been there that morning.
“Why?”
He sighed and looked around for his flask, but realized he had forgotten it in his tent. Or maybe Nasheem had kept it. He couldn’t remember, but he wished he had something. Still, he pushed on without anyone noticing his distraction. “I have to appear to be doing something, otherwise, my value to The Kindler, to Guinira – to you – it all goes away. If I don’t attempt at least one more attack, I’ll lose my head, if I’m lucky.”
“So what do you plan to do?” Daliana could be forgiven for the yawn she had to fight back as she asked the question. It was late, or rather, very early.
“I plan to send my whole force, thirty-five thousand, into the forest. We have rafts, so I’m having them cross the river, and they’ll march two miles north.”
That woke Daliana up. “Thirty-five thousand? Does it have to be so many?”
“Unfortunately, yes. If I can’t take the forest, I’m ordered to burn it down. So I need you to kill or capture the remaining Armandan Ringlords, or get more Drog Morschledu down here so that they can’t start this fire.”
“We’ll be prepared.”
“Then I leave General Eshtarin here, and you’ll have Mandrath and the Torridestan tomorrow.”
He turned to leave, but Edya called him back. “Makret …”
“Yes?”
She did not answer, but threw something to him. He caught it easily, despite the heavy darkness underneath the trees, and opened his hand to look at it. A small blue stone sat there. “She told us what you did.”
She thought she saw a single tear roll down his cheek as he turned away, but it might have been light from some lone star glittering through the hundred-foot high forest canopy.
*
Later that morning, Edya’s army, with another two hundred Drogs that she had requested from a nearby settlement, was in position at the place where Makret said he would be entering the forest. Daliana’s archers were hidden high above, moving quickly and silently through their canopy pathways. She waited as the sun climbed higher. It was almost the fifth bell before she heard anything, but it was too small and too close to be Makret’s army. She beckoned two soldiers over, and the three moved with what stealth and grace they possessed towards the disturbance. What they saw surprised them all: a Torridestan and a Storinean fighting three Armandan Flame Weavers. It was strange, but Edya could not force herself to move. She did not have to.
Without warning, five of Daliana’s Rangers dropped from various heights, landing outside of a longsword’s reach. Two archers walked out from opposite sides, bows drawn, and arrow nocked and ready. The five stopped instantly. Edya stepped forward, and without hesitation, the Torridestan man shouted. “Morschcoda. Druoth marched south. Look to the river…” The man’s voice trailed off. The sword sprouting from his chest, and the look of savage ferocity and pleasure on the face of the young male Armandan behind him, reminded Edya that there were some, even Ringlords, who wanted the Seven Devils resurgent and the world brought to its knees. Two arrows buried themselves in the Armandan, and he died instantly. Edya recognized the Torridestan man as Eildar Dalrey, Erygan’s son, but she wasted no time beyond summoning a healer that she doubted would be able to help him. Within twenty minutes, her small force of just twelve hundred men, and Daliana’s slightly larger army were marching to intercept Makret Druoth and thirty-five thousand Deshika. Edya wondered if she had lost her mind.
*
Makret wondered if the two Morschcoda had gotten his message. He knew that they would never be able to stop him if they believed he was still marching north. He did not think that they could defeat his whole army anyway, but the two Morschledu, Eildar and the Storinean, had ridden out of the camp that morning as if the Seven were after them. Guinira’s three Flame Weavers had needed little urging to chase after them. If he was lucky, his two men would make the forest, and Daliana would deal with the Armandans. If he was unlucky, then he was marching into the heart of Dothoro with thirty-five thousand Deshik warriors. Most of the veterans of Emin-Tal were hiding in the Garuthen Mountains, almost two hundred leagues to the northwest.
*
Daliana and her people ran through the interlocking boughs of the forest canopy, traveling much safer and more well used paths than those that Edya and the Drogs below would have to use. It was not far, only three miles, but the run at top speed taxed her men. They dropped almost wearily to the ground, sometimes from as high up as seventy feet, landing on the wet but firm ground, just one hundred feet from the advancing Deshik horde. Daliana was one of the ones who dropped the furthest, but she also landed far better than most of her people, her right hand propping her up as she fell to one knee, with her spear braced against the ground in her left hand, and an Anshawl slapping against her left thigh. The Deshika needed no goading to begin a new war. Daliana was happy to oblige.
Edya saw the problem as soon as her men got within sight of the battle that Daliana had joined without her. The quarter-mile-wide Cardor River, born in the high mountains of Noldoron, was a rampaging monster almost all the way to Drogoda’s western wall. There were fords, but they were fifty miles away. She yelled her orders to the soldiers all around her. “I am going to slow the river. You’ll have to swim if you are going to join in this battle.” She did not turn around, so she did not see the looks of fear and guilt that many
of the Drogs behind and beside her wore. Instead, she directed all her willpower, her concentration, and her vast strength towards the swift flowing river, slowing it, holding it back, flooding its soggy banks, undermining the vast network of roots that supported the giant trees all along the Cardor. She was aware of her small army surging around her, but she dared not divert any of her energy into paying attention to whether or not her men were getting across and were aiding in the battle raging on the far side.
The battle was not going well for Daliana. Her small force had halted the Deshik front, but Makret had enough men to continue his march while his column turned, driving Daliana and the Dothorin Rangers against the bank of the River. Pinned there, out from under the trees, her men were falling rapidly. But a single shout changed everything. She wheeled away from her enemy, dangerous as that was, and looked. Edya stood alone on the far side, but she had slowed the river between them to barely a crawl. And the Drogs she had, the water-loving and warlike people that they were, were swimming across to ensure that the battle went as planned.
*
Makret, from his vantage point well back from the battlefront, was stirred by, and afraid of, Edya Reeshnar. She wanted this victory, and she was willing to risk everything to ensure that she took it. Slowing even a tiny stream was a trial for most Drog Morschledu. Slowing a river such as the Cardor, at least a quarter of a mile wide, born of the wild ice in the bitter peaks of Anaria’s tallest mountains, was an immortal’s feat, impressive and terrifying. He did not know what Edya Reeshnar was, but he thought that then might not be the best time to find out. When the Drogs emerged from the river, Edya, no longer able to negate its massive momentum, collapsed. The Drogs though, their blood burning in their lust for vengeance, took the battle to the Deshika, driving them back under the trees, where the Dothrin Rangers could hunt and kill them with ease. ‘Yes,’ thought Makret. ‘It is time to retreat. Nasheem shouldn’t be too disappointed. I’ll save at least thirty thousand men.’ He gave the order to withdraw, and the War Chiefs, seeing the power of Edya Reeshnar, for once obeyed without question.
The Cost of Victory
Daliana, bleeding from a small gash on her leg, climbed the nearest tree and crossed the river to where Edya Reeshnar struggled to rise to her feet. She had released the Cardor, and now it raged in full fury as it would during the early spring. Daliana was not the first person, though, to reach the Drog Morschcoda. Just as she regained her feet, she collapsed again, but before her head hit the ground, El Darnen emerged from the trees and caught her. Several hundred of the Greshida followed him out into the clearing around the river.
“How did you do that, Edya?” Daliana was out of breath.
Edya was slow to respond. “I just had to … but … I didn’t know I could.” And then she fainted. El Darnen slowly lowered her to the ground, and ordered his men to set up camp. He returned to Daliana after a few minutes.
She was standing by the riverside, staring at the raging water. “El Darnen, you’re a Drog. Do you think that you could have stopped this river?”
“There aren’t many Drogs who could even slow the Cardor, even this far south. None could do it north of the shallows. I could do it here, yes, and maybe further north, but …” He let the comment fade.
“I didn’t say it to call her strength into question. I just need to understand. So many of us died, and Guinira has turned so many more against us. What hope do we have?”
“The same hope that we always had, Daliana: a dead man’s hope. But we have weapons. There are still swords in Anaria. The Kindler doesn’t want us uniting under the banner of the Garrenins a second time. He knows that there is still the strength to challenge him for Anaria. How we would defeat the rest of the Seven Devils … I don’t know.” He left her then, and went to meet with his captains and arrange for the Deshika to be watched, and turned back if they ventured under the trees again.
Daliana sat silent for a long time, waiting for El Darnen to come back, or for Makret to enter the forest and explain himself, or even for Edya to wake up. But the healers told her that Edya needed to rest and recover, and El Darnen seemed oddly protective of the young Morschcoda General, a constant presence in case anything changed. And Makret sent no messenger nor did he come himself. So, feeling very alone, Daliana climbed a tree, deciding that she could put her restlessness to use high above the ground by spying on Makret’s camp. But when she finally reached the height of the canopy pathways, the highest of which were nearly one hundred feet up even that close to the edge of the forest, she merely ran. She did not pay attention to the direction, nor did she pay attention to where her feet fell. If she slipped through a hole, she allowed herself to fall to the next layer of entwined branches, and then she slowly worked her way back up. Nothing mattered in that time, only the feeling of her feet hitting the well-worn, smooth bark of the treetop pathways that her Rangers often used. She did not stop for almost two hours, and even then, she continued to move forward. She did not know what drove her.
Daliana had just decided that it was time to return to the camp when something caused her to turn and draw the sword that she had brought from the camp. A man was standing just ten feet from her, hidden up against the trunk of a giant maple.
“You do not need your blade, Daliana Marcarry.” She did not lower it. “Even if I posed a threat to you, such a weapon would hardly protect you from a man already dead.” That got Daliana’s attention. She lowered the point of her blade to the branch that she stood on, but did not sheath her sword.
“What do you want, spirit?”
“So formal? You were never so when I stood beside you as lord of the Half-Elvin.”
She inhaled sharply, recognizing the tall, handsome man at last as he stepped forward into the pale moonlight. “Atalin?”
“Yes, my lady. I have come back.”
“But how…”
“Please, my lady. My time is short, and I have much to say. Morning draws nigh, and I will fade with it.” She nodded. Interactions with the spirits of the dead, while rare, always agreed on the fact that ghosts faded with the setting of the moon. “There is strife between the Seven. If there was ever a time to strike back, it is drawing near, but your own force is still weak. So there are several things that you must know. In the Garuthen Mountains, there is an artifact that El Darnen has long watched over. He must take you to it if the Warship is to sail once again. Also, the journey of Kallin’s father was not in vain. But he will not return. Someone must seek him out.”
“What does any of this mean?”
“I am only a messenger this night, my lady. The Lords of the Dead do not reveal to mortals what they did not know in life. I know nothing more than I have said, and would not be permitted to speak of it if I did.” He started to fade, and Daliana looked east, where a faint glow was beginning to pierce the thick leaves. She turned around, and Atalin was already completely transparent. “I will return before the Silver Moon if I can, but I do not expect to have more knowledge to share with you if I do come back. Good bye for now, my lady.” He faded away.
It took Daliana some time to figure out where she was, and what direction she had come in her need to move, but she guessed as well as she could and stuck to that direction. She ended up being nearly right, and eventually struck the Cardor, but she was far west of El Darnen’s camp. It took her another long hour to get back, and when she did, things were basically as she had left them. Daken Calmi and Aleishi Mandrath, who had met El Darnen as he marched east and returned to the river with him, sat around a campfire, not sure what they should be doing. Gelinia Eshtarin, who had planned to remain with the camp anyway, was taking a turn watching over Edya. Daliana apprehended a healer who told her that Edya was recovering rapidly, but still should rest for as long as possible. But El Darnen was not behaving the same way that he was when she had left. The Serpent seemed to be trying to create a new fork in the river. He had crushed a narrow strip of grass with his pacing: from the fire where the Daken and Aleishi
sat, to the river, and back again. It looked like he had worn a groove into the ground already. She had been intending to pull El Darnen aside and speak to him quietly, but there was no need. As soon as he saw her, he left his pacing and walked over, gesturing with his head into his own empty tent. Normally, she would have been concerned about the way that others might interpret what they saw. Now, she just needed answers.
She was about to start when he jumped in ahead of her, his tone worried and fierce at the same time. “Where did you go?”
“What are you talking about?”
He sat down on his bed, then immediately stood up. He clenched his fists several times. “Your little midnight run. You were gone for five hours, Daliana. FIVE HOURS! Where did you go?”
She put a hand on his chest to hold him back and remind him to be calm. “Relax, El Darnen. I needed to run, to move, to be doing something, so I did. I went north.”
“You felt the need to run. Did you feel the need to get eaten? You know that Lurnax hunt at night, and one lone Morschen, running through the forest, through an area known to be part of their territory, would be a good night’s hunt for one hungry lizard.”
Daliana would have been offended if she weren’t touched by his concern. “I am aware of the dangers that Lurnax pose. I have lived in the forest my whole life.”
“Then I ask you to consider those dangers before you feel the need to run again. We can’t afford to lose you, Daliana.” He laughed at himself. “Besides, your father would haunt me till my dying day and beyond if I let anything happen to you.”
She was taken back by how much the generally reserved and detached Serpent seemed to genuinely care about her safety. But she had other things that she needed to talk about with him. “My father may haunt you, but another spirit has come to me.” She paused and savoured his unsettled look. “The ghost of Atalin Danalath was with me in the forest tonight. He told me several things.”
Devil's Dominion (The Anarian Chronicles Book 2) Page 6