A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  “East was correct,” Shandie said suddenly. “This has been an evil night’s work. Was I wrong to offer mercy, Ylo?”

  Ylo stopped in astonishment and raised the lamp to see his legate’s face. “You are asking my opinion, sir?”

  Shandie had halted, also. He rubbed his face with his hands—wiping his eyes or else concealing his expression. “I suppose I am. Give it.”

  “I…” Ylo almost panicked, trying to find words.

  “Better keep moving,” Shandie said, “else we freeze to death. Obviously you doubt.”

  Ylo began to walk again. “I am not qualified to judge, sir. No one is. ‘Might have been’ is a game for the Gods.”

  Shandie followed. “I think perhaps I was wrong. Had I demanded surrender, they would have spurned it, but they might have broken before our charge tomorrow and run. Now they will not. Had I not parleyed at all, they might have tried to break out and I could have let them go. By seeking to save all of them, I have condemned them all. Stubborn, yellow crackpots! Elves are the most twisted thinkers in all Pandemia. And I have angered the warlock of the east.”

  Ylo made a noncommittal noise and concentrated on finding the way. If Shandie needed to talk, then this was a safer place for him to unburden himself than in the camp, where ears abounded.

  “Worse. I have made a bad enemy in South!”

  Yes, that might be the nastiest wasp in the nest. History told of many imperors who had alienated wardens and paid dearly for it.

  For a moment Shandie muttered inaudibly. Ylo walked on, watching the sparkle of reflections on the water that cascaded down the track in front of his boots.

  “Sir? What’s the Covin?”

  “No idea,” Shandie said absently. “Covin’s a legal term for conspiracy.”

  “But…” Perhaps Ylo had misheard. He’d thought that Olybino had used the word. In fact, he’d even thought the warlock had used it as if it were the name of something frightening. Absurd! What could possibly frighten a warlock?

  Shandie’s mind was on other things. “Lith’rian thinks straighter than most elves, I think, Ylo. I shall resign my commission.”

  “Sir?”

  “I don’t know what has gotten into my grandfather lately. He was never a warmonger. He prided himself on being a man of peace. And this last year… My place is in Hub.”

  That was the most cheerful remark Ylo had heard for weeks. Yes, Hub would be a very pleasant change from this.

  “The time for obeying orders may be past,” Shandie said.

  God of Mercy! What was he planning? That was not a good thought at all. Shandie had a daughter back in the capital, a daughter he had never seen. A daughter could carry on the dynasty if… if Shandie tried a rebellion and failed. Good be with us! Was he thinking of trying to usurp the throne? Ylo did not want to think such things. He did not want to hear such things. He had escaped the executioner’s ax once by an eyelash.

  “It’s stopped raining!” he said loudly. “That’s good!”

  “No!” Shandie said. “That’s bad. That’s very bad. I was afraid that might happen.”

  6

  The rain had stopped. As Ylo and Shandie were being challenged by the outposts, the wind was rising. By the time they reached the commander’s compound, it was rushing along the lines of tents in noisy ripples and tearing the clouds off the stars.

  The legions were on battle alert; there had been no fires since sundown. Rank had its comforts, though, and those included a couple of dim lamps and a charcoal brazier. Centurion Hardgraa was busily producing hot drinks for cold officers, having nothing better to do and being one of those perpetually active people Ylo could never understand. It was impossible to imagine that human lumberyard ever putting his arm around a woman and just relaxing. He fussed over Shandie like an armored hen, especially when they were in the field, where military procedures recognized no place for personal bodyguards. Relief flooded the centurion’s gnarled face as he saw that his beloved prince had returned unharmed, but he said nothing. Instead he thrust out a branch with a tankard that steamed invitingly.

  Shandie muttered thanks, passed the draft to Ylo, and waited for the next. That was typical Shandie.

  The mug was wonderfully warm in freezing fingers, smelling of fragrant herbs. It tasted of spice and honey. Ylo burned his mouth and didn’t care. He thought he could hear ice crystals crackling inside him as the hot stuff went down, and all the little hairs on his arms stood up in celebration.

  The tent was filling up. Armor clinked. The air grew thick with the smells of wet leather, wet horsehair, wet men. Wet wolf, locally.

  Shandie passed back his empty mug, glancing around the dim faces cramped in on all sides. The tent roof flapped loudly, which meant the ropes were drying out already and the wind was still rising. God of Mercy!

  The proconsul spoke up then, in the harsh voice of authority. “Everyone here? Very well. I offered terms. They were refused.” He paused, as if waiting for comment, or picking his next words with care. “So the plan remains the same, gentlemen… with two minor additions. First—no quarter.”

  One or two drew breath audibly. Perhaps it was just his imagination, but Ylo thought there was a change in the silence after that. Butchery was never popular, if only because it meant that the other side would not be taking prisoners, either.

  The tent billowed and creaked.

  “Second. There may be a change of plan, either before or after battle is joined. I am aware that we are facing a defeated, encircled, outnumbered rabble of elves, gentlemen. But there could be unexpected developments, is that clear? Whatever orders I send, don’t write me a letter to ask if my signifer’s been partying.”

  A few of the men chuckled, as he must have known they would.

  “Something funny?”

  Silence.

  “You will not question any signal whatsoever! I hope there is no confusion over that? Then try to get some sleep, all of you. May the Good be with us.”

  Nicely done, Ylo thought—as always. Shandie had given as much warning as he dared. Of course he’d left the signifers exposed, no queries, no repeats. Ylo’d better not get his right hand mixed up with his left in this one.

  The visitors departed, all but Legate Arkily of the XXVth. Ignoring him, Shandie began stripping off his armor and Ylo went to assist. It would all have to go on again right after, but a good toweling would help. Arkily was hanging around because he was second in command and therefore had the right to know everything Shandie knew.

  But nothing in the world would start Shandie babbling lunacy about dragons, not even to Arkily.

  During battle alert, Ylo slept on a cot in the commander’s tent. Ylo could always sleep, even in damp chain mail in a rising gale on battle alert—it was a gift. He also had the ability to waken instantly, as he did when Shandie lifted the flap to look out, at first light.

  The signifer raised his head and sniffed. Impossible! Then he was on his feet beside the proconsul, staggering slightly, shivering with dawn chill. Sniffing again.

  “He’s bluffing!” Shandie muttered furiously. “He wouldn’t dare!”

  It seemed as if the warlock would dare, though.

  Rain had been falling for weeks, all over Nefer Moor. The streams were bank full, brown torrents. The trees, the grass, even the soil—they were all saturated, and yet the smell of wood-smoke was unmistakable. The elvish army lay to the west and the wind was out of the west. Ylo made an audible gulping noise as the implications fell all over him.

  Shandie growled in frustration. “It’s a bluff!”

  Maybe it was. Maybe the fire was only an illusion. Maybe it was a real fire and had been started by mundane human hands, impossible as that seemed. But the only way to call that bluff would be to march a detachment of men into the blaze. If the Protocol still held, then no sorcery would harm them. The elves would, of course. Even mundane flames would.

  If it wasn’t a bluff, there were dragons between the two forces and the scouting part
y would be melted.

  Dragons sought metal. Gold for preference, but bronze would do. Four legions in this camp—twenty thousand men in helmets and chain mail, with swords and shields, officers in cuirasses… several hundred tons of metal. A dragon would go insane on a single taste of metal, and waste the countryside.

  “If there are dragons out there,” Ylo mumbled through a sour, dry mouth, “can he keep them under control? Can even a warlock keep them under control?”

  “That’s what we’ll have to discover, isn’t it?”

  And Shandie was the sort of commander who might think to put himself at the head of the First Cohort and investigate in person. If he did that, Ylo would be lead man.

  That might get his name in the history books.

  If there were any more history books.

  Drumbeats throbbed through the camp and armored men poured from the tents into the half-light. Even seasoned campaigners woke easily on the morning of a battle, and it was no secret that the legions had brought the elves to bay at last. The weeks of marching in circles on Nefer Moor were over.

  Reveille was the worst time of the day for Ylo, when all his varied responsibilities seemed to scream for his attention at the same moment. He had to attend to his own toilet, dress himself, help Shandie with his armor, see that the necessary signals were being issued, and wrestle a dozen lesser snakes before he could even give a thought to breakfast. The most important task of all was the trooping of the standards. All the lesser signifers of cohort and maniple brought their own standards to be blessed, as well, but it was Ylo who saluted the Gods each dawn, Ylo who swore that the legion would serve the Good—a commitment that he always felt should more fittingly be made by the legate who would give the orders. In this camp, he was senior of four legionary signifers and everything took four times as long.

  The bunting on the standards snapped impatiently in the gale. Halfway through the invocation, he began to cough. His eyes had been tingling for some time. In the distance, horses were screaming in terror. Wet wood generates much smoke.

  He was facing northwest, toward Hub. He could see the snowy majesty of the Qobles out of the corner of his eye. They were even more spectacular than he had expected. He could detect very little but smoke to his left, but at times he was sure there were flickers of fire visible there now—no dragons in sight yet, thank the Gods! He could hear the roar of flames, hear trees exploding in the heat. That soggy glade where he had met the warlocks might be ablaze already. Cough! He was many days’ march into a forest and downwind from an inferno.

  He had been worrying about the dragons themselves. He had forgotten the intense heat a dragon gave out.

  Cough!

  “Signifer!”

  Ylo blinked tears away and spun around in astonishment. To interrupt the invocation of the Gods was a major break in discipline, whatever else it was, and not something he would have expected of Shandie. “Sir?”

  “Strike camp!” the prince commanded, and then he, also, was convulsed with coughing.

  Ylo grabbed the standard from its socket and made the signal. Legates and tribunes and signifers were running already.

  The warlock had won.

  Shandie strode back to his tent with a face black as a cave. Perhaps, like Ylo, he was wondering how many days’ march lay between the legions and the edge of Nefer Moor. True, not all the Moor was heavily wooded, but most of it was. Forest fires traveled at night, as well as by day.

  Would Warlock Lith’rian offer quarter, or would the elf do to the imps what they had planned for the elves?

  A runt. He had looked about fifteen.

  The roar of flames was quite audible now, the fire visible. Whole trees were exploding into flame. Where was Warlock Olybino?

  Shandie charged into his tent and headed for the chests where the secret documents were kept. He threw up the lid and then began to cough again. Even within the tent, the smoke was thick enough to see.

  He turned to Ylo. “Get a bugler!” Ylo ran, almost colliding with Centurion Hardgraa as he led up the proconsul’s horse. Despite its blindfold, it was struggling and thrashing, insane with terror. Normally a horse wrestling Hardgraa would be an interesting match to watch.

  Striking camp in a gale was never easy; it was impossible in a choking fog of woodsmoke. The mules were as terrified as the horses and could not be loaded. Shandie probably recognized the inevitable as fast as any man there and admitted it much sooner than most commanders would. He abandoned the baggage, called for column of route. Even then he was too late.

  Withdrawal became retreat. Retreat became rout.

  The flames were coming faster than a man could walk; the smoke alone was a killer. Before the dull red sun was clear of the horizon, four legions had been reduced to a panic-stricken rabble, fleeing eastward. Time and again men found their way blocked by flooded streams. Time and again men crested a safely grassy hilltop only to see fingers of fire already curling into the valley ahead. Some claimed to have seen dragons, but the claims were doubted—in that brutal smoke, a man did well to see his own boots. Whatever was making the forest burn, the fire alone was enough to save the elves.

  No Imperial Army had faced sorcery since the War of the Five Warlocks. The casualties were surprisingly few, but the survivors staggered back to Qoble in tatters, a starving mob half crazed by terror. The other two legions were attacked by the elves under Sirdar Puil’stor and driven from Ilrane with heavy losses.

  The Seven Victories had been followed by a crashing defeat. For the first time in nearly a thousand years, the Protocol had failed the legions.

  Voices prophesying:

  And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

  Ancestral voices, prophesying war!

  — Coleridge, Kubla Khan

  FOUR

  Destiny obscure

  1

  The Gaib Place, on the western flanks of the Progiste Mountains, was known to everybody as one of the best there was. It had its own spring, which failed only in the driest of summers, and it was tightly enclosed by steep slopes on three sides. The only way to it was along a path winding through the plantation of coffee trees that Gaib tended so carefully. The Place also grew beans and pumpkins, sweet potato and bananas, corn and melons and a thousand other things—more variety than any other Place in the district.

  The only fault the neighbors could ever find with the Gaib Place was its isolation, for there were no other Places within a quarter day’s walk. In Thume that was a very unusual criticism. Pixies were a shy and reclusive people, prizing privacy above all else.

  The very center of the Gaib Place was marked by a gnarled gray boulder about the size of a chair. When Gaib and Frial had built the first room of the cottage, they had enclosed that boulder within it, because it marked the spot where they had consummated their joining and thereby consecrated the Place to be their dwelling ever after. As Gaib had added other rooms around it, that one had remained their bedchamber. They slept there always, on a fragrant heap of fern fronds, laid on the packed clay floor. Such was the way of the pixies.

  As their family had grown, the cottage had eventually sprawled out into an untidy collection of four rooms. The construction was skimpy and patchy even by local standards, for Gaib was much more inclined to nurture trees than to cut them down and he had tried to make do with deadfall as far as possible. The poles of the walls were too narrow to hold chinking properly and the shingles leaked in the rainy season. So the cottage was nothing much, but it was a good Place.

  Gaib and Frial were distant cousins. Their family was recorded as Gifted, but that had never been a problem for them. Gaib had an undoubted talent for green things. When Gaib planted something, it grew. Some of that was experience, which he would share when asked. He could explain with great patience how one must transplant a coffee seedling with its taproot straight, else it would die before it even flowered, but sometimes his success was inexplicable, uncanny. The neighbors joked that Gaib could talk a sick tree better, or mak
e an old ax handle sprout and bear fruit.

  Frial had Feeling, which was both a blessing and a curse to her and might explain why she had accepted a Place so remote from the clamor of others’ emotions.

  Despite their respective abilities, neither she nor Gaib had ever been recorded as having Faculty, nor any of their ancestors, either, as far back as the great-great-grandparents they had in common. Oral traditional could reach no farther than that, but the recorders insisted that the family was Gifted.

  Three children they had reared there. Feen, their son, had gone off in his time and found a Place of his own amid the cedar groves of Kestrel Ridge, and found a good woman to share it with him. Sheel, their older daughter, had toyed with several suitors until her easy-tempered childhood friend Wide had taken her to see a fine spot he had discovered some two days’ walk to the north. She had accepted him there. Frial and Gaib saw little of Sheel now, but she was known to have at least one child.

  Now only Thaïle remained at home. She was fifteen, gangly and awkward yet, but a loving, lovable girl, a joy to her aging parents. A year ago Thaïle had kept Death Watch for Phain of the Keez Place and had received her word. That was when fear had entered their lives for the first time.

  The rainy season was almost over. Winter still ruled the high country, but the cool season was the most pleasant part of the year in Thume. The day was sunny and calm, although storm clouds hid the palisade of the Progistes, that comforting barrier against the terrors of Outside. The aromatic scent of coffee blossom had gone now, but there was a rich sort of greenish, growing feel to the air around the Gaib Place. Pigeons were purring tenderly to each other.

  Gaib had killed a pig that morning to replenish the dwindling larder. He sat on the bench by the door, enjoying the sunshine and scraping the porker’s skin with a split rock. Frial was making sausage in the tiny kitchen.