Moontide 04 - Ascendant's Rite

by David Hair

  ‘Good grief! Ramon Sensini is an idealist! Who’d ever have thought?’

  ‘Oh, I’m full of surprises.’

  She yawned. ‘Well, young Ramon, that’s a lot to absorb and no mistake.’ She stood and ruffled his hair with a fond smile. ‘I need some sleep, and I’m not going to do it in the same room as you: bad for both of our reputations, I don’t doubt.’ She jabbed a finger at him. ‘I’ll play along with being part of your conspiracy, but if you betray our boys back at the camp, I’ll pursue you to the grave and beyond.’

  He nodded meekly.

  She snorted. ‘I’m not fooled by you, Ramon Sensini. I know what manner of man you are.’

  That worried him more than any threat.

  Riverdown, near Vida, Southern Kesh, on the continent of Antiopia

  Moharram (Janune) 929

  19th month of the Moontide

  The transfer of the Lost Legions to the western shore of the Tigrates took place on a still night, the stars giving just enough light for the men and women to safely embark from the makeshift docks the legion magi had thrown together. Seth and Ramon watched over them, standing with the last cohorts manning the walls, maintaining the illusion that this was just another quiet night in Riverdown.

  ‘Once again you’ve got us out of a tight spot,’ Seth said in a subdued voice as they joined the last men slipping away.

  Ramon tried to appreciate the attempt to cheer him up, but he really didn’t give a shit whether they all lived or died right now. ‘This was baby stuff,’ he said morosely. ‘Even you could have done it.’

  He was dimly aware of Seth clenching a fist then exhaling forcibly, but he was too far down misery creek to wonder why. ‘We’ll find Severine and your baby,’ Seth said after a few moments.

  ‘She can’t have gone far,’ Ramon muttered, although the truth was, he had a very real idea where Severine might have gone, and was scared he’d never see her or Julietta again.

  He’d been exhausted when he and Jelaska got back to Riverdown. He knew they were late, but he hadn’t expected to walk straight into another tirade from an overwrought Severine: a screeching, embarrassing and humiliating dress-down in front of half the army. But next morning the Blackbird was gone, and so were Severine and Julietta. No one had foreseen that, so there had been no one guarding the skiff. No one saw them leave, and no amount of scrying or gnostic calls was eliciting a response. He felt crushed and empty as a broken eggshell.

  But there was more to be done. He looked up at Seth and felt for the minds of the magi on the boats, awaiting the signal. He’d planned one last surprise for the Keshi, a warning to them not to follow, and to ensure his men didn’t have to suffer yet another archery barrage as they left.

  ‘Do we proceed?’ he asked quietly.

  Seth looked chilled at the thought of what they had prepared. They’d initially conceived this as an emergency plan – something to throw at the Keshi if they were discovered mid-evacuation – but from there it had evolved into something more. ‘It’s not necessary,’ he said. ‘We’re clean away.’

  ‘It’s a war, Seth,’ Ramon said. ‘If we kick them here, they’ll not try so hard to follow us.’

  They both looked down at the surface of the river, the gentle starlight illuminating the backs of the crocodiles, so many you could have crossed the Tigrates on their backs. Their eyes were gleaming, their tails steadily churning the water as they waited; there were occasional harrowing glimpses of teeth flashing. And that was just a part of what they’d planned.

  Ramon waited. Come on, Lesser Son, he thought, I want this. I want to know someone else is suffering too.

  Seth could doubtless feel the eagerness of his magi, poised to strike back at the enemy who had pinned them in the camp for so long. They all wanted to show what they could do – and perhaps he felt a little that way too. His own role in this wasn’t small, after all. ‘Very well, let’s do it.’

  *

  ‘Great Sultan—! Please, waken!’

  Latif stirred groggily, the insistent hammering on the gong and his aide’s call dragging him back into the waking world, which was filled with noise: shouting and screaming, blaring trumpets and the hammering of spears on shields.

  Are we under attack?

  Rubbing at his eyes and shivering at the chill air, he desperately tried to focus. It was still dark, the lamps glowering like the eyes of jackals. ‘What is happening?’

  ‘The enemy—! They’re escaping!’

  ‘Where? How?’

  ‘Ships, Great Sultan!’ the aide babbled, handing him his robe.

  ‘Windships?’

  ‘No, Great Sultan, riverboats!’ The aide sounded furious. ‘Our own riverboats! General Darhus is leading the attack – we can still catch most of them!’

  Darhus was a veteran of two Crusades, with the scars of failure to prove it. He’d been descending into a morass of drink and bitterness until Shaliyah had rejuvenated him. He had been appointed to the command here when Salim went north.

  Latif sat up. ‘I need to see him – there will be a trap. I know these people.’ He thought of the cunning one, Sensini, with a chill. ‘We can’t just rush in. Where is the general now?’ He pulled the underrobe over his head as a dozen more aides flooded in to start the well-practised drill of dressing him fit to meet a visiting ambassador or king in a matter of minutes. But it felt like it was taking for ever, while all around him the clamour of men spoiling for a fight grew louder. Their fury was boiling over.

  Finally he was ready, surging from the pavilion in a cloud of guardsmen out into the confusion of a waking camp. The cry went up: ‘The Sultan comes! Salim is here!’ Men crowded closer, trying to look purposeful and fierce.

  He gestured to a senior aide, Barzin, a Mirobezan eunuch, a clever slave who had risen high in his service. ‘Tell me what has happened – and what General Darhus is doing.’

  ‘Great Sultan, our sentries saw torches in the enemy camp and we sent scouts closer; we found the enemy mustering, and boats on the river – a great flotilla, loading the ferang soldiers onboard.’

  ‘Whose ships are they?’

  ‘The rivermen, Great Sultan,’ Barzin said, wincing.

  We should have burned them out. ‘Where is General Darhus?’

  ‘He’s leading the attack, Great Sultan.’ The aide pointed towards the front lines, a seething mass of men, dimly lit by the torchlight, some hundred yards away. Beyond them a thin line of enemy torches lined the barricade. Just then trumpets blared again, sounding the charge, and the whole mass of men lurched forwards, shouting their war cries.

  A frontal attack in the dark? It felt foolhardy . . . but if the Rondians were embarking, they’d be unable to man their walls and would finally be swept away. His fears hovered, though. What might a Rondian mage achieve in such a situation?

  ‘Get me a horse,’ he snapped at Barzin. ‘I must be able to see.’

  By the time his white mount had been saddled and brought over, the attack was underway, with a great deal of shouting and gesticulating as more and more men flooded forward, ignoring their officers in their eagerness to overrun and plunder the enemy camp. The assault was beyond recall; it was just a mob, the noblemen as out of control as the conscripts. He could see little from the ground, but once he had swung into the ornate, jewel-encrusted saddle on his mount’s back, he was above the masses. He held the reins lightly and steadied his white gelding while trying to make sense of the ocean of movement around him. He felt like a twig in a whirlpool, swirling helplessly towards some dark end.

  ‘Get us closer!’ he shouted, and Barzin whipped his guards into movement, spearheading a way through the press, approaching the Rondian barricades in fits and starts as the oblivious conscripts kept impeding his progress. The gelding, a riding horse not bred for war, was unhappy with the great mass of people, so Latif kept him to a walk to avoid crushing some poor soul. ‘Faster! Clear a path! I want General Darhus!’ he shouted to the oblivious soldiers.

  The
mob had reached the top of the Rondian barricades, waving their weapons triumphantly before being swept over the top and out of sight by the mass of men coming up behind. Everyone was jubilant and excited, and desperate for loot.

  Then the earth shook, an alarming great rumble, so intense the gelding staggered, and all around him men grabbed at each other, many falling, all yelling in fear.

  The ground shook again, harder this time.

  Then the screaming started.

  *

  An hour later, Latif sat on his throne and awaited his commanding officers. A gong boomed and an aide stepped inside the pavilion, and dropped to his knees. ‘Great Sultan, General Darhus awaits your pleasure.’

  ‘Send him in. And the Hadishah captain – what was his name?’

  ‘Selmir, Great Sultan,’ Barzin said, walking down the long intricately patterned carpet to ensure the general and the Hadishah had been disarmed before escorting them to the throne. As the men prostrated themselves in front of their sultan, he withdrew to the desk to await further orders. A dozen guardsmen stood with bared blades as the general and the Hadishah knelt with their foreheads on the mat, as if they were slaves. Both were pale and shaken, fearing the consequences of failure – for they had most definitely failed.

  Latif turned to Darhus, a man in his fifties with greying hair and beard, first. ‘General, what are our losses?’

  Darhus kept his face lowered. ‘More than three thousand men, Great Sultan.’

  Three thousand . . . Ahm forgive us!

  ‘Great Sultan, the enemy were further advanced in their evacuation than we had thought,’ he began in a plaintive voice. ‘By the time we broke into their camp, they were already boarded on the riverboats and were standing off the shore – and then the earth shook, firepits opened, the land subsided and the river rushed in, full of crocodiles . . . thousands of them. My lord, you saw . . .’

  ‘Yes, Darhus, I saw.’ He had indeed seen: a vision of Shaitan’s lair, enough to convince everyone that these magi truly were the afreet of legend. And to think I believed Seth Korion to be almost human . . .

  ‘Captain Selmir, explain what was done.’

  The Hadishah captain, a handsome, almost pretty man, raised his head, daring to meet his gaze. He had taken the time to shave and oil his jet-black hair; with his aloof air one might almost have thought he was the man in charge. ‘It was a trap, and this fool fell into it like a child.’ He threw a contemptuous sideways glance at Darhus. ‘When the alarm was raised, General Darhus ordered the advance blindly, and his men rushed straight in. Earth-gnosis shook the ground – of such intensity that it suggests the spells were long-prepared. This caused the encampment area to collapse, letting the river and the crocodiles in. There were thousands of the beasts, and they had been whipped into a blood-frenzy.’ For a moment his composure dropped and he faltered, shuddering at the memory. ‘It was a slaughter . . .’

  He recollected himself and straightened his shoulders. ‘Meanwhile, many firepits had been prepared and they started exploding, triggered by the approaching men. There were other things too: bound spirits of the dead, water-spirits, snakes.’ He looked down. ‘Some of these things we have never encountered before.’

  Behold, Rashid’s feared Hadishah, who tyrannise the courts and villages of Kesh and Dhassa, but cannot stand against half or a third as many Rondians. ‘Should you not have detected their activity?’ Latif enquired.

  Selmir was smart enough to see the trap in the question. If he claimed they had been alert and on watch, as they should, then why did they fail? If they had not been vigilant, then why not? ‘Their training is so much superior to ours,’ he muttered.

  The usual excuse. At what point does it stop being inferior training and become a betrayal? ‘Selmir, you were charged with monitoring their activities,’ he said, his voice quiet. ‘You boasted that we would know what they were doing as soon as they did it. Perhaps you will explain how you missed this?’

  ‘Great Sultan, they are more skilled – their Arcanum, their systems – we are still learning! It is not the fault of my people! My Lord Rashid would say this!’

  Yes, hide behind Rashid’s omnipresent cloak, as always.

  The galling thing was that not even Salim could punish this arrogant man the way he deserved for his negligence and incompetence. Magi were too precious, and of course they all knew it.

  He gritted his teeth. ‘Leave us, Selmir.’

  The Hadishah captain bowed, his certainty restored; sure now that he was escaping punishment. ‘Thank you, Great Sultan.’

  ‘Selmir, you misunderstand: you will leave the camp and report to Lord Rashid in Halli’kut, so you can explain your failures to him in full, and in person.’

  Selmir went pale. He might be precious, but he could still be punished by the Hadishah commander, Rashid himself. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. ‘Great Sultan, please—’

  ‘Perhaps you will be chained to a bed in a breeding-house for your failings, Selmir – tell me, is that punishment or reward in your eyes?’ The mage bowed his head, mortified, his cocksure demeanour entirely vanished.

  For the first time, Latif raised his voice. ‘Get out of my camp!’

  When the Hadishah had gone, he stood. ‘Darhus, my friend, get up.’ He signalled for wine, poured two cups and handed one to the general. ‘Drink. Tell me, how long have we known each other?’

  The general stood shakily, sipped a mouthful of the wine, then another. He was sweating profusely, not just because of the morning heat. ‘Great Sultan, I was present when you were first presented to the people by your father.’

  Has it truly been so long? It probably has. ‘What were your mistakes last night, General?’

  Darhus dropped his eyes. ‘I did not control the advance until the facts could be verified. I allowed a mob mentality to overtake us, resulting in our men rushing in headlong in the dark. Even when the trap was sprung, those behind thought battle joined and continued to pour in.’ He raised his head again. ‘I am sorry, Great Sultan. I will not let you down again.’

  Because you will not be given the chance.

  ‘Thank you, General Darhus. You know what is expected. Your descendants will praise your name for a thousand years.’ Ritual words, to strengthen him through the ritual he would soon be facing alone. To be stripped of command was to face eternal disgrace, but to die in service preserved status and face.

  By midday, the general was dead by his own sword and the Hadishah man departed. The riverboats were long gone, leaving behind a wrecked camp so dangerous that no-one had even ventured inside again to take down the remaining Rondian banners. They fluttered on the breeze like a taunt.

  Seth Korion’s army had escaped again.

  19

  The Battle for Forensa

  Krak di Condotiori

  The Krak di Condotiori, or ‘Fortress of Mercenaries’, acquired its name after Rimoni mercenaries, settling in Javon after the opening of the Leviathan Bridge, seized it to defend and control the southern passes into Zhassi Valley. To prevent the incessant border warfare between the Zhassi Keshi and the Javonesi, the fortress was strengthened by the Ordo Costruo; it became the most impregnable castle in northern Antiopia.

  It is also an object lesson on the folly of trusting mercenaries.

  ORDO COSTRUO COLLEGIATE, PONTUS, 881

  Forensa, Javon, on the continent of Antiopia

  Moharram (Janune) 930

  19th month of the Moontide

  Sir Roland Heale nudged his horse through the broken gates of Forensa and surveyed the sea of destruction beyond. Every building within two hundred yards of the inside of the city walls had been pounded to rubble by the explosive catapults. His legionaries were filing into the wreckage, a maze of shattered buildings, seeking an approach to the main citadel where the Nesti flag still hung limply in the ash-laden breeze. The air was so thick with ground-mist and smoke that he could barely make out which way to go.

  Someone shouted, and a volley o
f arrows fell among his officers. None struck flesh, shielded away in flashes of light, but the men shouted indignantly and counter-shots flew to where they thought the volley had come from, somewhere beside a smashed Dom-al’Ahm. ‘There are still pockets of enemy in the rubble,’ an aide shouted.

  ‘Well, that’s bleeding obvious, isn’t it?’ Heale snapped, making the man cringe.

  ‘They’re still thick as bugs south and east of here,’ a rival aide said. ‘After the breach they fell back to a canal that flows through the city. The Harkun have pushed right up to it, but they’ve not been able to cross yet.’ The aide pulled a face. ‘Even the Nesti women and children are fighting. These Noories surely hate each other, sir.’

  ‘They certainly do,’ Heale agreed. He’d not realised before how people of the same breed could loathe each other so much, but it was proving very useful. Betillon had under-estimated the resistance of the Nesti; they really did need the Harkun hordes.

  ‘They’re barbarians, sir,’ another aide chimed in. ‘Even the Rimoni have been fighting like savages.’

  It’s this stinking hot land, Heale decided. It degenerates even civilised people. Fury had been rising inside him at the slow pace of the siege and the mounting casualties. When the gate crashed down, he’d thought it would be all over quickly, but if anything, the defence had intensified. He wanted to get in, now. Badly. Victory could not come soon enough.

  ‘Force a way over the canal and they’ll crumble,’ he replied. ‘Forward!’

  *

  Ghujad iz’Kho smelled victory amidst the stench of smoke and death. He slithered down a broken wall and ran to a window of a miraculously still-intact house overlooking the choked canal. He cautiously put an eye around the corner and looked out; an arrow flashed by and smashed on the wall behind him. He withdrew, laughing at the near miss. ‘Our Jhafi kin can still shoot, eh?’