Compared to the forested road they had left the no man’s land was barren. Fifteen years of war with Mardule had left the last stretch of Andian land at the border devoid of any life and the air seemed rank with the smell of blood and violence. In place of trees there were banners slowly blowing in the breeze. In place of bushes there were piles of skulls, mementos to battles both won and lost. Selth had tried talking with Aren quietly when they first entered the barren plain but Kant had hushed them both with a terrifying glare hissing that ‘sound carried a long ways in no man’s land’ and from that point on the whole group had ridden in complete silence, broken only by Kant whispering in a barely audible voice that they needed to change directions or stop and wait for a group of soldiers to ride by them. By the time the sun was nearing the horizon again, Selth thought she was going to die from fright. Sweat was streaming down her face from all the close calls that had occurred and her legs were so stiff from clenching the sides of her horse that she thought she would never walk again.
Kant called a halt as the sun moved below the horizon, “We’re fine to stop now. No war party is going to be moving this late at night, soldiers are far too lazy for that. But no fires. We eat cold meat and then go to sleep. We need to be up before everybody else if we want to survive. I would hate to have gotten us this far only to have a bunch of soldiers ride in on our sleeping bodies.”
“Why don’t we just keep riding until we reach the Andian encampment then?” Selth asked, keeping her voice to a whisper, “If all the soldiers are asleep wouldn’t it make sense to travel at night?”
He shrugged, “You would think so but no man’s land is so full of potholes and pits that we would be more likely to break one of the horses’ legs, and be stranded as easy targets, than reach where we want to go. I need the light to get us anywhere safely, and so do the horses, so we have to move during the day, even if the soldiers do the same.”
Mattle seemed to take his explanation as obvious and Aren nodded along with it so she decided to accept the reason as well. Thinking about it, it made sense. Sometimes she forgot that most people couldn’t see in the dark as well as she could. Kant tossed around strips of cold rabbit and the four of them each ate a piece. He tossed a fifth piece to Raxous who hungrily snapped it out of the air before curling up beside Mattle where the two fell asleep. Selth wrapped herself in her cloak and followed their example.
She didn’t dance among the stars, though, instead she appeared back in the office of Atlatraigan. She felt a shiver of terror run along her body at the sight of the man with his silver hair and impeccable body but her fear became real when she saw what was standing at the other side of the room. The same traiganidorian which had attacked her in her dream so long ago was standing looking at Atlatraigan. “Are you prepared to finish your task?” he asked in a soft voice and a language which grated against Selth’s ears painfully. For some reason she could understand what he was saying.
The traiganidorian answered in the same tongue and if she had thought it was bad coming from Atlatraigan it was a hundred, a thousand times worse, from the traiganidorian. She had to resist the temptation to clap her hands over her ears and fall to the ground as she listened to the beast speak. “Yes, master.” it grated out, falling over itself with adoration for the man standing across from it, “The cursed one shall not escape me this time, master. This time I shall destroy him completely.”
“See that you do!” Atlatraigan snarled at the beast and with a grotesque mockery of a bow it exited the room. He fell back in the seat behind his desk and rubbed his forehead with one gloved hand muttering softly, “Damn you, Selthraxadinian. Damn you to the straights of torment, the fields of torture, the pits of chaos. I will capture you. One way or another, I always deliver. Always!” he finished with a roar, “He will have you! Do you hear me, filth? He will have you!”
Selth felt a shudder of terror pass through her as the dream faded and she appeared in the beams of light which had been her dreams for the past few days. They offered her no comfort though, not after what she had seen. What sort of man could order around a traiganidorian, the most terrifying creature from the lowest level of Hell, as though it were a dog. What sort of man did a traiganidorian worship with such ardor.
As the sun was just peeking over the horizon she woke, chilled to the bone with terror by the wind which howled endlessly across the barren waste of No Man’s Land. Quickly she moved between the sleeping forms of her companions and woke each of them in turn. There were a few sleepy complaints at having to get up but everyone quickly remembered where they were and with as little noise as possible the four of them mounted their horses, chewing on more cold rabbit meat as they rode out from their small camp.
Kant took the lead again and nobody complained or tried to talk as they made their way across the plain. There were more bodies scattered around this area, massive banners to mark victories seeming to rest every thousand feet. Briefly Selth thought about telling Aren her dream but decided against it, the way he had reacted to the idea of a traiganidorian showed her that he could do nothing to help her and she didn’t want to be left behind over something that probably wasn’t real. Not that that argument did much to help how she really felt. The dream had felt far more real than anything else so far, even the dream which had started everything back in the slums of Redtower paled in comparison.
Kant suddenly threw up a hand to bring their group to a halt. They had been riding for nearly half the day and the sun was at its zenith. He started cursing quietly then turned around and hissed at the four of them, “There’s no use for it. There are three groups coming in our direction. We’ll have to fight one of them.”
“Won’t that bring the other two groups?” Aren whispered back.
He shook his head, “Not likely, they won’t know how large of groups are fighting and they’ll be afraid of getting into a large confrontation with the enemy. None of the groups in front of us are very big so we should have a chance.”
Aren nodded his head and Selth managed to nod as well despite the nausea which had suddenly risen in her stomach. Mattle and Kant both strung their bows and readied the bristling quivers slung across their backs. Kicking his horse into a walk, Kant led them into a shallow valley, “This should cut us off from all but one of the groups. Mattle and I will bring down as many as we can with arrows and then close in for hand to hand. Aren if you can do anything with magic, do it. Selth,” he drew an extra sword, sheath and belt from his pack and threw it to her, “use this.”
Selth nodded but Aren shook his head, “There’s nothing I can do with magic that wouldn’t draw every person capable of sensing it within a hundred miles and I can’t risk that. The Academy may not have become involved but that doesn’t mean there aren’t magic users fighting for Mardule.”
Kant gave a snort of disgust at the idea but nodded his understanding at Aren’s inability to act. Readying his bow, he swung to face the Northern rise of the small valley. Twenty soldiers rode over the ridge at that moment, brandishing the black hawk on a red background that marked them for Mardulian soldiers. Almost as soon as they came over the ridge arrows started flying from Kant and Mattle but the hill was too short for them to do more than stop three of four of the men. As the men charged down the hill Selth felt time slow to a crawl around her, the arrows Kant and Mattle were firing seemed to creep through the air like snails and the horses charging at her looked more like statues than live animals. A new presence seemed to enter her body and suddenly she knew exactly what she had to do. Swinging off of her horse, she hit the ground hard and unsheathed the sword Kant had given her. She tossed the sheath and belt the sword had been attached to on the ground and strolled towards the charging horsemen. She briefly thought about using her daggers but she was afraid that might send a beacon to magic users in the same way that Aren said his magic would. For some reason she knew that the slowing of time wouldn’t register. It would be over too fast to do so.
She strolled amidst the charging men
with amusement, it was as if they had barely even started moving. For a moment she considered dancing around them until the last moment just so that she could enjoy the feeling of utter power that came from moving and seeing things infinitely faster than those around her. Chuckling dryly to herself she decided against it. Walking amongst the men, Selth started slitting throats with the long blade she held in her hands. It felt like five minutes’ work to her but when she was finished and had walked back to where Kant, Aren and Mattle sat on their horses the arrows that the Inquisitors had fired were still hanging in the air. She picked up the sword belt and sheathed her sword, swung up onto her horse and pulled at the strands of magic that had slowed time for her. Suddenly things were moving at a normal pace. Kant was tossing his bow on the ground and drawing his sword when all twenty men collapsed out of their saddles with slit throats and tumbled to the ground. Kant, Aren and Mattle all stared at the men with astonishment, “I thought you said you couldn’t use magic.” Mattle said to Aren in shock.
“I didn’t.” Aren said simply and turned to Selth. She gave him a small smile and wink but held her tongue and he gave a nod of approval. “Whatever happened, I’m just glad it happened to them and not to us. Who knows what sorts of magical traps litter this wasteland? We’ll just be more careful from now on.” he turned towards Kant who was studying Selth with narrowed eyes and asked, “Shall we?”
Kant tore his attention away from Selth and glanced at Aren and then Mattle. He gave a curt nod and they rode on. All four of them kept as quiet as possible from that point on and followed Kant as he led them around one group of soldiers after another. As the sun was approaching the horizon line a massive encampment of soldiers appeared in front of them and he gave a relieved smile, “Andin’s western encampment. Let’s go.” he kicked his horse into a canter. Selth smiled, finally able to relax, as she followed him towards the encampment. When they approached the border, a sentry stepped forward to stop them but Kant pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and showed it to the man. They were waved into the camp without a problem after that.
Kant led their group through the massive encampment to a small area that seemed to be set apart from the rest of the soldiers and pushed into one of the tents. He pointed Selth to the one right next to it and her eyebrows shot up in surprise when she saw the inside of the tent. A makeshift bed had been rigged up and two oil lamps attached to a pole burned in the center of it. There was even a rug laid out over the bare ground. Poking his head back out of his tent Kant chuckled, “Diplomat tents, cushiest place to stay in a military encampment if you have the right documents.” he patted the pocket he had taken the paper from with one hand and gave a wink, “Even if they’re not actually the right documents.” Selth’s jaw dropped, she hadn’t expected forgery from an Inquisitor, but she shook her head as she realized that all through the trip her expectations had been getting worked and reworked as knew information came to light. She didn’t know anything about what to expect from an Inquisitor.
Working quickly, she hobbled her horse outside of her tent and grabbed the saddle and saddlebags. She rubbed the horse down, something she hadn’t been able to do for a while thanks to the pressures of their travel, and pushed her way into her tent. Undressing, she threw herself onto the bed and fell into a deep sleep. She danced among the stars the whole night and when she woke Selth felt far more rested than she could remember being since her encounter with Cereus in the woods.
19
Lord Gambril
I have seen Shattrenlix’s new creations and now understand his plan. He will betray us! I have told the others but they will not listen to me. They say I am too suspicious but in truth they fear my cunning. They fear this is a trap. It is the issue with being the devious one, I am always suspected.
– Journal of Selthraxadinian
Poking her head outside of her tent in the morning, Selth saw that Kant was already up and sitting in front of it, waiting. “Yeah?” she asked curtly, startled to see him.
“Stay in your tent today,” he ordered, “We cross the border as soon as the sun is down and I don’t want half the camp to remember us when we do.” then he stood and stalked towards one of the large tents at the center of the military encampment. She scowled after him, that was just perfect. He wanted everybody to grow bored to death while he went off and arranged matters to his liking. Movement from Aren’s tent showed her that she wasn’t alone in her sentiments.
“Shall we?” he asked, pulling himself from the tent where he had spent the night and gesturing towards the rest of the encampment.
She laughed softly. “I thought you would have been with Kant, keep quiet and don’t talk to anybody. What are you going to do out there anyways?” she gestured towards the main body of tents.
“Oh, this and that.” he said slyly, “I can’t be expected to be perfect one hundred percent of the time, can I? If that was the case I’d have become an accountant instead of a mage. I need excitement in my life!”
Mattle poked his head out of the tent he’d shared with Kant. “I see the two of you are going to disobey Kant.” he shook his head back and forth, looking between the two of them as though he couldn’t decide which one he was more disgusted with, “Those orders are for our safety when we cross the border. You would do better to listen to the man who actually knows what he’s doing rather than cavorting through a military encampment like a couple of fools.”
“We’re not the ones who are bound by oaths to do what Kant says.” Selth stuck her tongue out at Mattle, “Maybe if you decided to branch out and think for yourself sometimes you’d have more fun.” He started to open his mouth in an outraged manner but she wiggled her fingers at him in a mocking good bye and ran into the encampment before he could get a word out.
She was shocked at what she found as she wandered around the massive camp. She couldn’t imagine anything being able to defeat such a group of armed men but all the faces she saw were masks of dejection and sorrow. No groups of men sat clustered around fires playing at dice or talking about battles they had won. No one was sharpening or cleaning their weapons so that they lay ready for use. Instead the men were sitting outside their four person tents in silence, staring at the ground as if in hopes that it would rise up and consume them rather than forcing them to stay where they were.
Selth tried asking one of the men about how the war was going but he just laughed insanely, “War? What war? This isn’t a war, this is a slaughter and we’re all pigs lined up for the knife.” She stumbled back in shock at the response. She had thought that Andin and Mardule were even in their efforts to destroy each other but it appeared as though her home country was being slowly defeated by Mardulian forces. Turning towards the large tents at the center of the camp, which Kant had disappeared to in the morning, she threaded her way towards it. There was no sense of order to the encampment; tents were pitched wherever soldiers had decided it was convenient and piles of weapons lay in many of the open spaces. Soldiers lying out on the grass served to fill most of the rest of the ground and there wasn’t a speck of green anywhere that Selth could see. The tents of the soldiers were all small despite the fact that they slept four men each. Many were torn and from what she saw of the insides nobody was living comfortably.
It took her almost an hour to reach the center of the camp with its massive command tent. The soldiers clustered around it looked far more prepared and ready than the soldiers she had seen near the outskirts of camp. Their weapons were sharpened and cleaned, and they were more organized than the others, but they all wore the same dejected look that she had seen at the outskirts. The command tent was guarded by twenty soldiers in chain mail armor with pikes for driving off unwary soldiers who wandered too close. Selth didn’t need to get close though; throwing herself onto a bare patch of ground she listened through the shadows that lay around the edge of the tent to what was going on inside of it.
“If we send the fifth legion towards Ceresinct we can draw off Mardule’s forces and push
towards the capital with the third!” A voice she didn’t recognize was shouting.
Someone snorted and started speaking. With surprise Selth realized it was Kant, “Don’t be a fool, Lord Gambril. Every time we’ve tried something like that the Mardulian general has been one step ahead of us. He’s a better commander than anyone here and he’s proved that time and time again. If we send the fifth he’ll just send Mardule’s elites to harry it all the way to Ceresinct and there won’t be enough men to put up a prolonged siege by the time they arrive. He’ll retain his regulars and he can use them to hold back whatever force we throw against him indefinitely. Andin simply doesn’t have the soldiers necessary to win this war.”
“And what would you have us do, Kant?” A deep voice spoke.
“He’d have us hunker down and do nothing as Mardule burns its way deeper and deeper into Andin until there’s nothing left of our country but ashes.” the first voice sneered.
“Once again you show your lack of understanding in military matters Lord Gambril. I do not suggest we abandon Andin but we can retreat from the border, go back to the keeps and citadels that have kept our people safe in the past. Mardule can’t hold our land forever, this war has dragged on too long on both sides. Everybody is tired of the fighting except for those rich enough not to feel the burden of it. In six months’ time they’ll have realized how pointless the whole war has been up until this point – fifteen years for twenty miles of burned out land which nobody wants. It’s ridiculous.”
The deep voice sighed, “I might agree with you under normal circumstances, Kant, but your own argument undermines itself. Any normal war would have ended after the first year stalemated at the border. Fifteen years for twenty miles of useless land proves that the Mardulians are intent on conquering Andin. No, we must hold the border but I will not send soldiers to Ceresinct just so they can die. We stay here and keep up our patrols. No attacking, it’s only brought us losses so far.”
The God in the Shadows (The Story at the Heart of the Void Book 1) Page 21