by Simon Morden
“My lord, I’m trying to explain, and badly. You’re the first mundane” – she screwed her face up as she said the word – “I’ve talked to for the best part of a decade. Within the Order, we’re very direct. We don’t talk around the subject, any subject, because that’s just a waste of time. We all hate each other anyway, so why bother being polite?”
“You need to remember who it is you’re talking to. I’m not one of your Order.” He got up out of his chair and started pacing. The tent wasn’t very big, so he spent most of his time turning. “Before my father died, he told me how to deal with you. He said, ‘Don’t bother them, Gerhard. Anything you can handle yourself, do so. But there’ll be times when a little more is required. Then ask them for help. Nicely. When you see what they can do, you’ll be glad you hadn’t bothered them before.’ So, Mistress Agana, what can you do?”
“That depends,” she said, “on what you want me to do.”
“I want you to kill every last murdering Teuton pig-fucker we find, then, on the way home, burn Simbach to the ground.” Gerhard stopped his pacing and clasped his hands behind his back. “Can you do that?”
“I can’t do the greater battle-magics. I can’t do a moving pillar of fire, or summon lava, or curse them all dead.” She saw that Gerhard was about to interrupt, and she held up her finger. “There is plenty I can do, though. If you use me right, we can still win.”
The prince frowned as he digested the news. Then his jaw dropped. “Gods, woman, you expect us to have to fight!”
“Well, yes.”
“The only fighting those men out there have ever done is to see who’s first to the bar.”
“Then you’d better hope they’re well trained. Or you could always turn back.” She looked up at Gerhard. “You’re the prince. You decide.”
He sat down next to her. “What can you do? Exactly?”
“All kinds of fire-magic. Elemental manipulations: if there’s a fire, I can make it use all its fuel at once. Depending on the source, it can be quite a big explosion. Minor summonings which, if done properly, aren’t really that minor at all. If they try to charge us I can guarantee I can drop the first couple of ranks.”
“Before they reach us, you mean.”
“Yes. I can throw a shield out – over some, though not all of us – that’s impervious to all moving objects. Arrows, people, beasts. Centred around me. Some of the spells are quite close-quarters. There’ll probably be casualties among your men, and I’m not a healer. Not even basic wounds.”
Gerhard rested his elbows on his knees and his chin on his entwined hands. “I don’t know. We’re going to lose men just protecting you.”
“Yes. How many Teutons are there?”
“Three hundred horsemen, excepting the ones killed in the fight over the barge. They’re good with a bow, as well as a sword. They’ve got their women in a horse-drawn wagon train. Children too, for all I know. Against our hundred infantry and twenty horse. And you.”
“If my lord wishes, I’ll return to the adepts’ house in the morning.” She was certain he wouldn’t accept.
He didn’t. Instead he asked: “Why now?”
“I still have no explanation to give you,” she repeated.
“What about the other sorcerers? The Teutons have one of their shamans with them.”
“You didn’t mention that before.”
“I just have. What about them? What if only the Order are affected?”
“The barge. How many of your men were there?”
“Two. Hunters. No magic.”
“And they rescued the bargees?”
“Yes.”
“Then there’s your answer. A half-competent shaman would have been able to rip their souls out and leave them shambling ruins, even over moving water. That they got away with it tells me that their shaman is either dead already or has run away.”
Gerhard blew out his cheeks. “And what of enchantments? The barges, the lights, the millstones, the bridges. Our wagons. My armour. My sword. They’re all working.”
“For now,” she said. “I can’t guarantee they will in the future.”
“You think everything will fail?” he said, then realised what that all meant. “Everything?”
His sword was around his waist, even though he’d taken the armour off for the night. He drew it and held it in front of his face, trying to detect if there was any change to the dark halo surrounding the blade.
“I don’t know,” said Nikoleta. “I’m just an adept. I’ve been able to enchant common items for a while, but I haven’t tried recently. I’ve been busy doing other things.”
“Busy? You’ve been busy? Well, that’s all right then.” He looked at her, and she noticed how his fingers tightened around the sword grip.
“Yes. Busy. You have to understand: what you do, what your people do, is of supreme indifference to a sorcerer. Your interests are not ours. Your father was right: don’t bother us unless it’s important.”
“As long as the money keeps on coming in.”
“Yes. We’re expensive. Whether we’re as expensive as having to recruit, feed, house and train a large standing army, I don’t know. I’ve never paid attention to the cost of things.”
“Carinthia is …” started Gerhard, but he stopped. His teeth ground together. “No. Not defenceless.”
“My lord, the men out there, the ones drinking and eating and singing by the fire; are they all that you have?” They were singing, too: the “Climbers’ Song”.
“A single Carinthian is worth ten other men. We have an army of a thousand outside.”
She chewed at her lips. “My lord, you don’t have a single hexmaster with you. I’ll do what I can, but whatever stories you’ve been told about how to fight a battle, even one as small as this, just don’t apply any more. We cannot march up to the Teutons and simply kill them all before they even get into bow-shot.”
“That’s how it always used to happen,” he said.
“You need more men.”
“I need the hexmasters I have paid for.”
“They’re not coming, my lord. Perhaps they never will again.”
Gerhard seemed caught between rage and terror. It left him looking impotent.
“Leave,” he said, waving the point of his sword at the tent opening. “I need to think.”
So she got up and slipped back outside. The night was cold, but the men were still singing.
14
They struck camp at dawn, and far from needing to be roused from an indolent lie-in, Nikoleta found herself ready long before soldiers came to dismantle her tent. She washed in water that wasn’t even as cold as that used in the novices’ house. Breakfast was the remains of supper she’d squirrelled away.
She found herself enjoying being outside the city’s confines more than she’d thought she would. Before, sleeping rough and splashing meltwater on her face were signs of failure. Now, after years of having every aspect of her life regulated and every shortcoming picked apart, she felt liberated all over again.
And the thought that when she got back to Juvavum, she’d march right up to the White Tower and dare the inhabitants to do their worst had kept her warm all night.
She hung on to one of the blankets and stayed wrapped in it while she watched the men uproot the stakes they’d hammered into the ground, then slowly collapse the poles that held the canvas upright. All across the camp, the grey forms of men in the half-light busied themselves with storing everything away on the wagons, feeding and resaddling the horses, spending one last moment by the still-smoking fires.
Those were tasks she knew little about, and when her tent was folded and carried away, she followed to watch the men lean into the wooden cart and stow it neatly with the others. The wagon’s wheels, propped up with a steersman’s stick, rotated slowly, waiting for solid ground to bite against.
Afterwards, she wandered where her feet took her, soldiers and servants and wagon drivers falling silent and respectful as she s
topped momentarily to watch them work, then murmuring softly to each other as she walked on. At one point, she found herself next to the two bonfires the men had lit the previous evening, and she frowned at the long iron rake being used to scatter the red embers across the scorched grass.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“We always do this,” said the man with the rake. “Grub the fire out.”
“But why?”
The man, with more than a hint of grey at his temples, hooked a half-burnt log and rolled it to the side of the fire. As he did so, fresh little tongues of flame crept up its blackened sides. “Mistress, I suppose it’s just down to good manners. If we were in a hurry, I dare say we wouldn’t bother. But when are we ever in a hurry?”
She could feel the heat on her face from the exposed ground at the centre. Of course fire fascinated her. She’d spent her adult life learning how to control it, use it, create it – but never tame it. It was wild, like she was.
“Leave the other fire alone,” she said.
“Mistress?”
“Just do it.” She walked through the embers to the far side, kicking up sparks as she walked. She could have done it barefoot, but she’d already put her boots back on. From the other side of the fire, she looked over her shoulder. “Understand?”
“Mistress.” The man looked down at the ground and wouldn’t look up again.
She sat down a distance away while the rest of the camp was cleared. Yes, the soldier’s captain questioned why both fires hadn’t been raked flat, and the man in charge of the task pointed over to her and shrugged his shoulders. She didn’t acknowledge the attention, only waited until everything was ready.
Doubt had no part in a sorcerer’s mind. Doubt was for lesser creatures. It was for those who weren’t supremely confident in their abilities and hadn’t practised until their noses bled through the sheer effort of concentration.
Nikoleta’s life had been forged in a hotter furnace than most: she knew that success and failure were sometimes out of her hands. What she had to do was to mould the world around her until it bent to her will.
She walked back through the line of ready wagons, files of spears and rows of mounted earls.
“My lord?” she said to Gerhard.
Back in his armour, the Prince of Carinthia looked down at her from his horse. “Mistress Agana, you’ve interfered with the orderly striking of camp.”
She nodded, looking back at the thin column of smoke still rising from the remaining fire. “I wanted to make a deposit of sorts. Of trust.”
Gerhard frowned under his helmet.
“Send the wagons on. We’ll catch them up soon enough.” She dismissed the servant holding the bridle of her horse, and put her foot in the stirrup.
Still frowning, Gerhard ordered the wagons down the via, and as the last one rolled away over the next rise, he rested his arms on his pommel.
The earls, the men, all were restless, concerned. Nervous. Nikoleta dropped her reins and nudged her horse around, using her knees alone. The fire was what? A stadia away?
Far enough for safety, and still close enough for effect. She could feel it, hot and energetic, like a wasps’ nest ripe for kicking.
The heart of the fire flashed, and suddenly there were burning missiles rising into the dawn sky. The highest rose almost vertically, trailing sooty flame, while those on a lower trajectory buried and bounced across the soft earth and the hard road. The sound was like a thunderclap that rolled on.
Some of the burning wood started to land uncomfortably close, and the soldiers began to shuffle backwards until Reinhardt growled for them to hold. Some of the horses bucked and shied, whinnying their fear, and their riders struggled to stay on.
When it was over, it seemed like half the hillside was covered in smoking debris, and ash like snowflakes began to fall.
Satisfied, Nikoleta took up her reins again. Gerhard seemed frozen. His son gaped. The Italian sword-master pushed his silly hat back on his head and contrived to look both impressed and unsurprised simultaneously.
“Father?” said Felix. “Did you see that?”
It was excusable for a twelve-year-old.
“Yes, I saw it,” said Gerhard, brushing his epaulettes. “It was very loud, too.”
“How can we lose?” Felix grinned to himself.
Allegretti turned his horse in a slow circle. “Perhaps you should concern yourself, young man, on detailing every possible way we can lose, and determining a strategy for combating them, rather than counting victory a certainty.”
“Oh, signore,” said Felix, but he was looking at the sorcerer. As she rode past, she slipped him a sly wink while everyone else was looking at the sky.
Eventually, Gerhard caught up with her. She glanced around to see the soldiers marching along with considerably more spring in their step than they’d formed up with first thing that morning.
“Does that answer any of your questions, my lord?”
“You could, if you wanted, kill us all and take the palatinate.” He stared straight ahead. “If you’re right, there’s no one who could stop you. Not now.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “but what would I do with it then? I’ve no interest in it and even less idea of how things work off of Goat Mountain. I’d have to resurrect you and all your advisers to show me how it was done.”
“You can do that?”
“No. It was a joke.” The corner of her mouth creased into a smile. “Even if I could bring you back, you’d be a mindless slave. Besides, I’ve no desire to turn you out of your throne.”
Gerhard rode on in silence for a moment. “The boy…”
“The boy’s a boy with wise masters. He’ll become a man who’s been taught well. At the moment, he’s too young to be scared of war, or even of me. He’ll learn that, too.”
“The princes of Carinthia have been in alliance with the Order for nearly a thousand years. What happens next? Where will Felix’s hexmasters come from?” The prince looked pensive. “I didn’t sleep much last night. If at all. These things, going around in my head, all the time. Everything we do relies on the simple effect of magic. Without it? We descend to barbarism and worse. Tell me the Order’s impotence is temporary.”
“The Order’s impotence is temporary,” she said.
“But you don’t believe that, do you?”
“I’ve no evidence one way or the other. Define temporary: is it a week, a month, or a year? Or a decade?”
“This brings me no comfort.”
“I’m not here for that. I’m here because you called.”
“Everyone must think that nothing’s changed. The hexmasters are still in their tower, the prince is still in the fortress. All as it has always has been.”
“But you can’t keep them fooled forever. When the barges stop coming, the millstones stop grinding, the carts stop rolling – they’re going to know.”
The prince turned a strange shade of red. “They will not.”
“My lord, the sun comes up every morning and sets every evening. If it didn’t, just once, the whole world would know and there’d be nothing you could do about it. People talk. No law you pass can change that.”
“They’ll do as they’re told.” Gerhard was adamant. “No one, inside or outside Carinthia must know.”
Nikoleta wondered how he was going to manage that. As far as the people of Juvavum were concerned, only one hexmaster had met the prince’s summons. Wasn’t that worth gossiping over? She’d heard a story once of a Danish king who’d given a simple but elegant demonstration of the limits of his authority by having his throne carried to the edge of a turning tide.
She wasn’t in charge. She had no wish to be in charge and no idea what she would do if she was. Yet even she could tell that the prince’s plan was unworkable. And not because he was stupid, but because accepting the truth was simply too much for him to bear. Gerhard was to be pitied, and she found that she did indeed pity him.
“As you wish, my lord
.” She eased off on the reins, and let him pull ahead. Several of his earls overtook her too, and she found herself at the back of the column of horse with Signore Allegretti.
“Good day, Mistress,” said the tutor.
She raised her eyebrows, and he looked to the left and the right.
“My apologies. I had assumed that someone wishing to be on their own would not choose to ride next to me. Should I remove myself from your presence before you remove me more permanently?”
“Where’s the boy?”
“With,” he said, craning his neck, “his father. He can only learn so much from me: defending himself, mainly, not defending the palatinate.”
She looked at him sharply, but he seemed not to notice.
“And, to be honest, he is already a good swordsman. I can still beat him, but my reach is longer and my fire burns brighter. Felix sees everything as a game. Even this. Even what you did. When he learns otherwise, he will outgrow my poor company.”
“I’m sure you’ll do whatever’s best for the boy.”
“Felix will have my best intentions, no matter what. However, this adventure seems singularly badly advised.”
“And you say that for a reason, or because you have an ache in your left elbow?”
“Mistress, as impressive as your demonstration was, I would still like to know where your colleagues are.”
“I…”
“One of the fundamental dicta of any fight, whether it is a brawl between two drunks or a clash of two empires, is to bring everything you have to bear on your opponent’s weakest point. What we have is them …” – he pointed behind him and ahead of him – “and you.”
“Your prince believes it to be sufficient.” She looked again at Allegretti. Her experience of men, mundane or otherwise, hadn’t been good.
“My employer,” said the Italian, “believes a great many things, and believes that his subjects should believe a great many more. I am neither a prince nor one of his subjects.”
“All the same…”
“I would be happier if there were two of you. Happier still if there were three. It is a shame my happiness is not the prince’s concern.”