by David Hair
‘This Vidran looks big enough to be a front-ranker?’
‘Aye, but he’s a little too fond of living – he thinks too much.’ Lukaz clicked his tongue. ‘The front-rankers take the brunt of the fighting, sir, and too much thinking isn’t a good thing. You just shove and stab and rely on the man behind you to pull you out before you run out of steam. But Vid’s smart; he knows exactly when to switch the front and second ranks, so he makes that call, mostly. He’s best exactly where he is.’
‘And the rest?’
‘Eight others, sir: Me and Baden with the standard, then six flankmen, three on either side. The flankmen have to be smarter, because when the enemy can’t break your middle, they’ll try and get round you. The flankmen are our best swordsmen, but they’re usually lighter and faster, not the sort to anchor a line. They’ll look to flank the enemy if we’re going forward, or keep us from being flanked if we’re defending. They’ve got to be good at reading the fight, and reacting.’ He pointed out the third cluster of men. ‘They tend to stick together too, but they’re more rivals than mates. We’ve got Ollyd, Neubeau and Tolomon on the right, Harmon, Briggan and Kent on the left. Stroppy types, mostly, think they know everything.’
‘They give you trouble?’
Lukaz looked a little uncomfortable. ‘They’re all good men, sir.’
‘You’ve got them well-organised: like pieces on a tabula board, all positioned to best advantage,’ Ramon commented.
‘You have to know what you’re working with, sir. The old pilus taught me that. Armies are big, but they’re made up of men: you put them where they understand their role and they’ll do it, most times at least.’
‘I’d understood the Crusades didn’t involve much fighting?’
‘The magi might think that, sir, but with only fifteen magi to a legion, there are a lot of places where we rankers have to act alone, usually against a Hel of a lot more Noories than us. Especially on garrison duty. When a legion gets left to garrison a town, the magi either ask for transfers or down tools and go drinking. They tend to leave the actual soldiering to us.’ He coughed a little self-consciously. ‘No disrespect meant, sir.’
‘None taken. I’m not like that, Pilus.’
‘We’ve noticed, sir. Right from the start, you took an interest – the men like that.’
‘What did you make of Shaliyah?’
Lukaz paused again, considering his words, then said frankly, ‘You magi let us down. Why did you not see the storm coming?’
‘A storm like that takes days to create, and considerable maintenance to hold it together, and you’re right: energy like that should have been detected. But if you know where and when it must strike, you could prepare it out of our “gnostic hearing”.’
‘So the sultan really did know we were coming?’
‘To the day, and for at least a month, I’d say.’
Lukaz blinked at that, then returned to his subject. ‘Also sir, when the fighting started and the enemy magi appeared, all ours went haring off, looking to duel them, leaving the rankers unprotected. If they’d concentrated on protecting us instead, we could have held the line and backed out of the path of the storm.’
That was pretty much what Ramon had been thinking. ‘How should rankers and magi fight together, in your view?’
Lukaz took a while to answer, but Ramon waited patiently. He was getting used to the man’s way. ‘Everything I’ve heard you magi say is that defensive gnosis is stronger than offensive, so those magi who fling spells over half the battlefield are just showing off, wasting energy. Seems to me a mage’s place is not glory-hunting upfront or in the air above, but right in the middle of a cohort, defending the men, sir. Let the soldiers win the battle for you.’
‘That is the opposite of what we’re taught,’ Ramon said.
Lukaz grunted. ‘Apart from a few one-sided scraps in Argundy, the only battles between mage-led legions were back in Noros, during the Revolt. The way I heard it, the Noromen magi did like I’m saying and were the stronger for it. But those big-knob Pallacian magi don’t want to fight as a team with mere rankers: they want to be riding a flying horse out in front of everyone. It’s all duels and glory with them. That might be fine when you’re fighting weaker enemies, but in a close fight, teamwork is what wins the day.’
He fell silent, and Ramon gave him a wry smile. ‘That’s a lot to think on. Thank you, Pilus.’
‘Sir.’ Lukaz went to leave, then stopped. ‘May I speak frankly, sir?’
I thought you were. ‘Of course.’
‘The opium – you saved us with it, but I don’t believe you brought it with us to burn on a battlefield.’ He didn’t wait for Ramon’s response. ‘Four men have died in this legion alone from the stuff, and more than thirty that I know of in others. It is a blight, sir, and I am ashamed that this legion has been associated with it.’
Ramon hung his head. Any number of lies occurred, but they were a long way behind enemy lines and he wanted this man’s respect. Time for the truth. ‘My mother … is a prisoner of a familioso chief, what we call a Pater Nostra, a Father of the Night. I serve him so that one day I can free her, and her daughter to him, my half-sister. He sent me into the legions to arrange and sell the poppy.’
‘Is your family worth the lives of all those men?’
‘It is when I bring down his whole familioso and free my homeland from him for ever.’
‘You can do this by selling poppy?’
‘If I do it right, I can collapse the world around him. More than ten thousand people live in the villages of my home. Are their lives worth less than thirty addicts in a Rondian army?’
Lukaz said slowly, ‘You are a dangerous man, Magister.’
‘To some, maybe – but not to everyone.’ He looked up as a movement in the skies caught his eye, then gave a sudden joyous shout as a square-sailed windskiff came hurtling over the ridge, barely ten feet above the ground. About it were three giant ravens, cawing hoarsely as they darted in to attack, then recoiling from bursts of blue fire.
‘Baltus! Here!’ Ramon shouted, aloud and with the gnosis, and the skiff swerved towards him as the cohort jumped to their feet. A javelin flew, gouging a line of sparks from a gnostic shield encasing one raven, enough to cause it to bank away. The other two rose higher, calling disappointedly, then soared over the column of men. They circled for a minute, then shot away to the north.
‘I guess that means they’ve found us,’ Ramon muttered.
Baltus Prenton guided his skiff towards a flat space nearby and Ramon ran to meet him. The windcraft jolted to a rough, sliding landing, and Baltus sagged in his seat, looking half-dazed.
‘Are you all right?’ Ramon called.
The Brevian Windmaster looked up with exhausted eyes. His face was drawn, his normal jollity almost eclipsed. ‘Sensini! Thank Kore!’
‘I don’t think anyone’s ever used that precise phrase before.’ He’d not seen Baltus since a few hours before Shaliyah, when he’d been ordered to find and lead in a caravan of supply-wagons. Ramon had supposed he’d simply kept flying west after learning the army’s fate, as the wagons certainly hadn’t arrived.
‘I’ve been hunting for you for weeks,’ the Windmaster panted, ‘and I’ve had those Kore-bedamned Souldrinkers after me most of that time.’
Ramon felt a quiver in his spine. ‘Souldrinkers?’
Baltus said grimly, ‘You can tell, if you look at them carefully. There were lots of them, in bird and jackal shape, mostly, on the back trail. They slaughtered the baggage train. I went back to report and found the army gone and the mother of all storms.’ He shook his head. ‘Why didn’t we know the Keshi had magical help?’
‘Who knows? How did you find us?’
‘You can see a lot from the air. I went high as I dared, to avoid the shifters.’ He slapped the side of his craft. ‘My Birdy did well, but they’ve got skiffs too – and not all their magi are Dokken, either. They’ve got both, working together.’
&n
bsp; ‘All the emperor’s enemies are banding together,’ Ramon observed.
‘If they’d caught me—’ He drew a finger across his throat. ‘They’re quick, these Keshi craft with those triangular sails, but their magi are weak, mostly quarter-blood at best. I could out-climb them, and if I called the winds, I could outrun them – and I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve too, thank Kore.’ He clambered to his feet and stretched wearily. ‘So here I am. What’s the news? Where’s the rest of the army? Where’s Echor?’
‘Well, if I told you that Seth Korion is in control of what’s left of the army, does that give you a measure of how rukked-up this whole expedition is?’
*
Over the next five days, the remnants of Echor’s southern expeditionary force wound out of the broken lands north of the Efratis and onto the floodplain, a vast expanse of silt. During the Moontide the Efratis and its hundreds of tributary rivers usually ran low, though it never fully dried up.
That was the theory, at least. Instead, Seth Korion was staring at the brown torrent raging across the entire floodplain and trying to reconcile it with the crude map in his hands. Around him magi and officers made up their own minds about the best route forward.
‘Why is there so much water?’ he wondered aloud.
‘It’s the aftermath of the gnostic storm at Shaliyah,’ Ramon Sensini suggested, and that harridan Jelaska immediately nodded her agreement, as did Sigurd Vaas. Renn Bondeau agreed too, and he almost never supported the little Silacian. I guess he must be right, then.
‘So what do we do?’ he said, worried that he sounded weak for asking.
‘We stick to the plan,’ Ramon replied. ‘Fill up the water-wagons, then take the river-road to Ardijah. There’s a bridge there, remember.’ He glanced at his own copy of the map, which had a lot of extra lines and dots on it. ‘Baltus has scouted the way ahead and it’s still clear.’
Seth frowned. ‘I thought I sent Baltus to scout our rear.’
‘Waste of time,’ Ramon replied. ‘He can’t be two places at once, and we need to know what’s in front more.’
‘But we need to know where the enemy are!’
‘We do: twenty miles back. I set some Trip-wards on our back trail and they’re being slowly triggered.’
Seth wasn’t appeased. ‘You changed my order.’
‘I adjusted it. You were in prayer with the chaplain and Baltus needed fresh orders after he’d confirmed what my Trip-wards had already revealed.’ Ramon grinned and waved a hand towards the flowing torrents below. ‘At least we’ve got plenty of water now.’
I should reprimand him. But the proximity of Jelaska Lyndrethuse and Sigurd Vaas, both tough and competent magi, was intimidating. And he’d probably done the right thing. ‘Very well,’ he said grudgingly.
‘Once the Keshi horsemen reach this road, they’ll be able to ride us down in a few hours,’ Vaas said gruffly. ‘We’ll need a rearguard.’
‘I’ll take that, with my maniple,’ Renn Bondeau piped up instantly. Still glory-hunting, even here. But Bondeau probably was the best man for the job.
Seth was about to agree, when Ramon said, ‘I’ve got a better idea. Let’s all do it.’
Renn Bondeau scowled. The rest just looked perplexed.
‘The whole army?’ Seth asked.
‘No, us – we magi, and a few cohorts to deal with any who get through our initial defences. If we can teach them a lesson about following us too close, they’ll be slower to pursue, and our rankers will see that they still have magi fighting alongside them. It’ll give them something to hang some hope on.’
‘An easy victory would boost morale, and maybe buy us the time to reach Ardijah first,’ Jelaska agreed, patting him on the shoulder. Seth noticed Severine Tiseme glaring indignantly at this familiarity.
For Kore’s sake, now they’re fighting over the little villain! ‘All right. Let’s do that,’ Seth said, so that it might look to at least a few people that he was actually in control.
They set up their ambush on the road behind them, with all the magi involved, except for him, Tyron and the healers. Apparently they were ‘too valuable’ – or maybe it was to maintain the illusion that the commanders were with the main body of the army, or something.
I think they just want to be heroes, Seth thought grumpily, but he left them behind, laying their elaborate plans, and with Tyron, rode west along the road to Ardijah with the footmen. The healers, Lanna Jureigh of the Thirteenth and a greying Estellan woman named Carmina, sole mage survivor of her Brician legion, had two dozen wagons laden with wounded from Shaliyah. The two healers looked exhausted.
‘So much for the glory of command,’ he commented gloomily to Tyron. His friend looked away; he was no fighter anyway. The chaplain had more worthwhile skills, in Seth’s opinion: poetry and theology.
‘The credit always goes to the commander in the end,’ Tyron told him, which was a comforting thought.
The midday sun might be cooler than during the march across Kesh last year, but it was still bad enough for men raised in the cold climates of Yuros. It wasn’t the only problem either: flux had been running through the soldiers, leading Seth to the conclusion that armies were little more than giant defecating machines.
‘Sir!’ A mounted scout trotted to meet him. ‘There is a junction ahead.’
‘And?’
‘Well, there’s a track that leads north, sir, and we don’t know what’s up there.’ He looked over his shoulder uncertainly. ‘Sir, do we proceed across the junction, or scout the way north first?’
Seth looked at Tyron.
What would Ramon do? Seth found himself wondering. Halt everything and play safe? Or laugh at such a trivial problem? Or maybe …
‘Send a cohort of mounted Estellan to scout the track, but keep the column moving,’ he ordered, and the scout saluted, and galloped off.
A few minutes later a party of swarthy, dark-haired Estellan – who don’t look very different from the enemy, now Seth thought about it – thundered past with lances high, dipping the points in salute then wheeling away down the northwards path that vanished into the low hills bordering the floodplain. He and Tyron decided they’d best wait for them to report back, so the column proceeded westwards whilst they chatted about the poet Marcel, who had been commissioned to capture the glory of the Second Crusade. They agreed that his famous line, pounding hearts resplendent in the intoxication of victory, seemed to have nothing at all to do with what they were going through, and what’s more, made little sense anyway. The poet Guilnes’ line, Gritty eyes bleeding tears of homesickness, was much closer to reality, they decided.
As the healers’ wagons were passing, Seth heard the pounding of hooves on the northern road.
‘That will be the Estellan cavalry,’ Tyron commented. ‘About time.’
‘What are they doing?’ Seth squinted at a dozen riders who had careered into sight and were thrashing at their horses like madmen. Their hooves shook the earth, far more than he could have believed from so few men. ‘Are they racing?’
Then an avalanche of Keshi appeared, screaming to Ahm and bearing down on the Estellan riders like the Ghost Hunt of Schlessen myth.
‘Kore’s Blood!’ Seth jerked into motion, glancing swiftly from side to side as he tried to see who or what might be deployed, but there were only wagons full of the wounded in sight, except for the guard cohort that followed him about.
Unbelievably, in the midst of the onset of panic, some rational part of him noted that what he should have done was deploy a maniple right there, where the track narrowed between higher ground, and sent more than just twenty men along the road. But then dread set in, and a kind of paralysis, and all he could do was open and close his mouth like a goldfish, leaving Tyron, beside him, to shriek orders at the pilus.<
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‘Form up, form up,’ the chaplain cried. He singled out a runner and ordered, ‘Bring men! Any men! Run!’
The young soldier shot away along the eastern road like a startled rabbit.
As the cohort formed a ragged line, two deep, one of the rankers grabbed the reins of Seth’s horse and pulled him in behind the line. Tyron came with him, struggling to control his spooked beast, and Seth’s mount caught the fear and began to jerk about. Both men had to cling on and rein in hard, and Seth barely registered the Estellan riders go down, caught from behind and stabbed in the back. The dead men’s horses ran on, thundering wildly past the cohort and straight towards the hospital wagons.
The tide of Keshi riders kept coming, scimitars waving as they ululated triumphantly. He tried to count them – forty, sixty? – but his brain could barely engage. The pilus was bellowing orders and the rankers were locking their shields together, but they were covering only half the open space. The Keshi poured closer, a tide of men and horses.
‘Sir! The gnosis!’ the pilus shouted in his face.
Huh?
Tyron shouted, and blue fire billowed from his hands into the onrushing enemy. One rider reared up and fell as the one behind him collided with him and the two went down in a billow of dust and thrashing limbs, but the rest flowed around them. They slammed into the cohort’s front line and the space in front of Seth became a mass of men and beasts, the riders’ horses rearing up and crashing their hooves against the cohort’s shields like a wave breaking, battering on steel, wood and bone. Scimitars slashed downwards. The noise was deafening.
The line of Rondians buckled, but the second rank shoved forward, plugging gaps and stabbing up into the chests and necks of the horses, shouting to Kore as they kept driving forward. The Keshi recoiled, the horses flailing backwards and the riders lashing about frantically to avoid being dragged from their saddles. But a glance left and right told Seth that the rest of the Keshi were simply going around them.
He jabbed a finger at a Keshi who seemed to be breaking through, more in panic than aggression, and mage-fire flashed. The man convulsed in shock as the narrow burst of energy blasted into his face, and he collapsed. Seth shouted in triumph and started doing it again and again, blazing away in a haze of anger and fear, barely thinking.